Merchant commerce platform Pine Labs has received approval from a Singapore court to move its operations to India, joining a host of several companies that have either relocated or are in the process of relocating to India, regulatory filings showed.
Valued at over $5 billion and backed by investors such as Invesco, Temasek, Peak XV, and Alpha Wave, Pine Labs’s transfer is expected to “achieve business synergies and more economies of scale”, cost savings, reduction in overheads including administrative, statuary compliances and simplify overall group structure, according to its statement filed with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA).
Pine Labs is among a string of other Indian startups that have shifted or are shifting their domicile to India.
While stock-broking app Groww and fintech firm PhonePe have already relocated to the South Asian nation, Meesho, Udaan, RazorPay, and Zepto are actively considering their move to India.
Pratip Mazumdar, Managing Partner of Inflexor Ventures, said it makes sense for these companies to have a local presence in the country as they will need to be regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) or equivalent regulators, and they predominantly serve Indian customers.
Mazumdar also added that Indian capital markets are more receptive to tech/tech-enabled firms even at a smaller scale of revenues versus US capital markets. So a firm with $100-250 million in revenue can easily get listed and get decent coverage in India, whereas the bar for getting listed in US markets in revenue terms is quite high at $500 million to $1 billion.