Kailash Madan

Fintech firm Pine Labs has received approval from a Singapore court to shift its operations to India. In a May 9 order, the Singapore court approved the fintech's firm request to merge its Singapore entity, Pine Labs Limited (PLS), with the Indian Pine Labs Private Limited (PLI) and transfer all its assets and properties. Read the full news here. https://lnkd.in/gyt-tKT2 #pinelabs #finanace #tech #fintech #technews #businessnews #latestnews #business #startups #entrepreneur #ai #smbconnect #therise

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𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙮 𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗰𝗼-𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿? Who better to get answers from than Subramaniam Srinivasan (CTO of OneLot, former Gojek and Traveloka). Subbu sits down with the Founders Launchpad team to talk all things product and tech—especially from the lens of starting a brand new venture. He brings a wealth of knowledge coming from a senior engineering background, then transitioning to CTO of early-stage companies together with his repeat co-founders Harm-Julian Schumacher  and Tommy Campos  Head over to the Founders Launchpad YouTube channel, or click the link in the comments to watch the full deep dive, where we talk about topics like: 🌟 What does it take to succeed as a tech co-founder? 🌟 How does one prioritize the need to fix bugs or refactor code vs building new features? 🌟 Should you always build in-house, or is outsourcing an option? 🌟 …and much more! Have a product leader you think we should interview next? Tag them in the comments.

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Want to take your angel investing game to the next level? Here’s how to start your own syndicate: 1. Gather your network that may be interested in angel investing 2. Create and set up your legal entity and SPV infrastructure via a platform like AngelList 3. Prepare for your first deal - discussions with the founder, collection of deal materials, confirmation of your allocation 4.. Write your deal memo, circulate the deal, collect commitments 5. Close the deal, wire the funds, and celebrate your first syndicate deal Importantly, after wiring the funds, ask the founder if you can pass along future investor updates to LPs so they can stay up to date with how the company progresses over time.

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🔸News Alert! RBI's Proposed Regulations for Payment Aggregators 🔸 Industry experts are buzzing with excitement over RBI's latest move! The draft guidelines for payment aggregators (PA) promise to revolutionize the digital payment landscape, ensuring trust and ethical practices. Here's why you should pay attention: ✅ Boost to PA Ecosystem: The proposed regulations are set to elevate the PA ecosystem, enhancing digital trust and fostering ethical practices. ✅ Level Playing Field: By setting standards and ensuring compliance, RBI's guidelines create a level playing field for all players, ultimately enhancing consumer protection. ✅ Inclusion of Physical Point of Sale (PoS): The updated definition of PAs now includes physical point-of-sale providers, bringing companies like Innoviti Payments, Pine Labs, and MSwipe under regulatory cover. ✅ Strengthened KYC and Due Diligence: With stricter KYC norms and due diligence measures, only eligible merchants can access digital payment services, further bolstering trust in the system. ✅ Fraud Prevention: The guidelines underscore the importance of fraud detection, emphasizing the purpose of KYC in preventing fraud and ensuring digital trust. Excited about the future of digital payments? Join the conversation and stay tuned for more updates! #RBI #DigitalPayments #PaymentAggregators #Regulations #Trust #Ethics

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Turns out, Sword Health has an interesting org structure where they hire ex-founders/wannabe founders as GMs, invest $1 million as a seed round, and give them 12 months to work. If the product performs well after a year, they follow up with a Series A investment. We do something similar at Docquity, and each time, the products have generated quite a bit of value for the organization in a fraction of the time it usually takes. In my humble view, this is the only way to create urgency and build value from 0 to 1 as a company matures. h/t Nikhil Krishnan

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Indian FinTech ecosystem should take a harder look at these numbers : Stripe insiders sold almost $700M in shares at a $65B valuation (up 30%) and is trading above $80B in some secondary markets – weeks after announcing that it passed $1 trillion in 2023 payments volume, Schroders marked its Revolut stake at a $26B valuation (up 45%), Rippling is in talks to raise $870M at a $13B valuation (up 20%), Ramp raised $150M at a little under an $8B valuation (up 32%), Mercury* launched personal banking and passed 100,000 startup customers, Sweden's Klarna launched its credit card in the US, as it gears up for a potential $20B IPO, and Brazil's Nubank announced plans to offer its own mobile phone provider. Hong Kong financial services firm Agba and social media app Triller announced plans to merge and create a $4 billion fintech and social platform.

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SCOOP: Moneyview is in late stage talks to raise $50-60 Mn from new + existing backers at unicorn valuation. The terms of the deal are in the last leg of negotiation. If the deal gets through, the lending firm would be the 3rd unicorn of 2024. For details, head to Harsh Upadhyay and Kunal Manchanda break:

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Most Pioneer Fund companies send monthly updates (some quarterly), and we read every update across the portfolio of 500+ companies. I actually still personally read every update. Most startups send updates with these sections, and it works well: - High level metrics (revenue, maybe another key metric or two like GMV or MAU, growth since last month, cash in bank, burn rate, runway). Many of the most consistently-growing or fastest-growing companies also include a revenue graph. - Highlights - Lowlights - Investor asks - Maybe a couple investor shoutouts from last month - Some short commentary on what the current priorities are, what's coming next, etc. Some founders like to include a special section or two. A few of my favorites: - Photos or videos of technical progress for hardware companies - One of our founders sends a self rating on a scale of 0-10 for the month, along with detailed explanation. Pretty impressive. - A zoomed out view of how the mission/vision/strategy is specifically evolving - Some have very detailed additional sections that are specific to their business. E.g. manufacturing updates, distribution updates, regulatory updates, etc. Each investor update may only take a few minutes to read, but they are the summary of the hard work of an entire team for an entire month, often fighting uphill or sprinting downhill or exploring the idea maze. We're always grateful reading them.

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Truly inspiring to listen to Dax Dasilva tell the story of Lightspeed Commerce on 20VC. With $900M in ARR I was thrilled to learn that Dax bootstrapped the company for 7 years to get to $10M in ARR. I hope it doesn't take us 7 years to get Liquid360 there but it makes me feel better about the 3.5 years we've put in to date. For me these stories are deeply encouraging. When you're building something very big it can take time to get to launch. A couple of weeks ago we met with a global player in the VC world. They were looking to invest $5M - $10M and we said we weren't there yet. We'll get there but it wouldn't be the right move today. They then jumped to another conclusion. The wrong one. I get it. They have a multi-billion dollar fund and capital to deploy. We have a company to grow and too much cash will not help us do it right. We've made good decisions being lean. Our customers are starting at $500K. This is an enterprise/gov't product. We have to satisfy a very discerning customer. No bugs, no glitches. A dependable and reliable product. We are excited by the feedback. We are making the world safer. Harry Stebbings suggested that Lightspeed is one of the most misunderstood companies. It's market cap is $2.6B which seems really low relative to the ARR. Very interesting episode.

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Calling newbie Fintech/lending PM's... Deep dive into the Customer Journey for Personal Loans (With Examples) With Lov Loothra 🤩 Senior Vice President - Product at Credit Saison India! Ex- Head of Product at Tazapay Ex- Senior Product Manager atAxio 📅 11th May, Saturday ⏰ 11.30-1 PM 🌐 Online  on Gmeet Registration link 🔗 in comment section or Just scan the QR code on poster. Key Takeaways: - Types of user journeys and their use cases - ⁠Understanding how the various types of bureau pulls work - What all goes into underwriting a user on the fly  - ⁠What are the future trends in this space Ideally who should attend? - Product & Design Teams - People building in Lending (0 - 1 or 1- 10 Stage) - Aspiring Fintech Entrepreneurs or Anyone interested in Fintech /Lending Debasmita Das & me are excited to host you. Tagging: Shakun G., Shashank B, Rushali Saxena, Abhimanyu Basu, Shreyansh Vats, Srinag K A, Harneet Kaur Chhabra, Prabhat Sachan, Rishabh Pandey, Radhika Sharma, Prashansa Yadav, Gopal Chandak, Nishit Anadkat. #productmanagement #fintech #finance #lending

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Stripe's retreat from India should be a wake-up call for US fintech Founders eyeing global expansion. But why founders specifically? Stripe's growth in the US was driven by a basic startup principle: the FOUNDERS personally identified the untapped market - This wasn't the case when they expanded to India. It goes deeper, as The Ken's article I read today pointed out – Stripe had to overhaul its entire architecture to meet RBI’s guidelines. What further delayed the process was the absence of decision making among local teams. This became a concern as other countries, like Indonesia, were also on the brink of changes in payment systems, whether due to regulatory shifts or evolving consumer behavior. Similar to India where consumer payment behaviors vary by context. For instance, educational fees are typically paid via net banking, while grocery purchases are made through UPI. Breaking into foreign markets, especially as a fintech, means really getting a handle on consumer habits and local regulations. It’s something that top leadership needs to take charge of. Source : The Ken's Article in Comments -

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Pine Labs gets Singapore court approval to shift base to India Merger Approval: Pine Labs, a merchant commerce startup, has received approval from a Singapore court to merge its local entity with its Indian unit, allowing it to shift operations to India. Regulatory Disclosure: Pine Labs disclosed the court order in a recent regulatory filing. Product and Backing: Pine Labs offers merchant solutions and is backed by investors like Peak XV, Fidelity, and PayPal, with a valuation exceeding $5 billion. Trend Among Indian Startups: Pine Labs joins other Indian startups like Meesho and Flipkart in considering a move to India. PhonePe and Groww have already relocated their overseas holding entities. Motivation and Expectations: Pine Labs aims to benefit from greater analyst coverage and demand from institutional investors in India. The move is expected to streamline operations, yield cost savings, and simplify the shareholding structure. Read more... https://lnkd.in/gdKjzfBH 

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After six years of bootstrapping - I’m excited to share that Slice has raised a $17.5 million equity and debt round led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) and Roadnight Capital. Our journey began over a decade ago - when I met my co-founder Yannick D. while working in a big bank's Collections and Hardship department. We spoke to numerous customers who had used credit cards to pay for a trip overseas - often for a family reunion or a cultural event. These customers wanted to be financially responsible, but because they had used a product with such a high interest rate, they were falling behind and feeling powerless. We wanted to create a product that would allow customers to book their flights, and then repay in manageable instalments before their trip. Our vision was to help customers access travel - while also helping them to budget sensibly and avoid financial hardship. In 2018, we launched our first product - PayLater Travel. In the beginning, we spoke to every customer on the phone - we manually made bookings, and paid upfront with our own credit cards (the irony!). Despite the janky product, our customers loved being able to lock in flight prices and having the ability to pay it off before they travel. We knew we were onto something! But behind the scenes, there have been plenty of unglamorous moments. When the pandemic hit in 2020, we lost 95% of our revenue overnight. We were terrified - but we were also too busy to feel sorry for ourselves. We hunkered down, made hundreds of calls to airlines, and ensured maximum refunds and credits for our customers. To survive COVID, we had to dig deep. Limping along wasn’t an option - unless we did something decisive, we’d slowly run out of cash.  With our backs against the wall, we decided to launch in the US. I had to sell my car and Yannick refinanced his home. In other words - we bet the farm. What happened next is… too long for a LinkedIN post! I’ve shared an expanded version of the story in our blog, Instalments by Slice (link in comments). Fast forward to 2024 - I feel deeply fortunate to have secured an additional $10 million debt facility from Roadnight Capital alongside a Seed investment led by Peak XV Partners. What's more - I feel blessed with a wonderful team, supportive friends, and to have helped 70,000 customers go on wonderful trips and create core memories. The best part - we’re only getting started! There are still millions of customers worldwide, falling into unsustainable debt and we’re here to do our part to change that! To read more about Slice and our first round of external funding, check out this article in The Australian Financial Review - #venturecapital #startup #fintech #funding #slice

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To VC or not (continued) After my last post on the topic, I got several pings of founders who said they can fully "relate" to the messages and thanked for writing them down. Another question was - knowing this, what should we do differently? Some thoughts here - 1. derisk yourself as a founder - go to market comp and do secondaries at every opportunity. This will help you sleep better as you'd know your family is taken care of which in turn will make your decision making superior and you will always think well in the long term interest of the company. Most experienced/seasoned VC's will understand this and will encourage this as the comp/secondaries you do would still be lower than the value at stake. 2. grow sustainably - "cap" the growth target. A lot of strong organisations which have been compounding well over the last few decades "cap" their growth. High growth gives adrenaline rush but does a lot of long term damage to the team, culture, unit economics (some of which takes time to reverse) etc. Given VC is here short term and you are in this long term, you will have debates around this too. Eventually, every high growth company will need a few low growth years to repair the damage done in high growth so a steady pace is better for you and the company 3. if it's not a winner take all business (most businesses are not) raise as less money as possible and treat VC money as expensive debt 4. don't hire all A's. hire a mix of talent. There are roles where you will need loyalty, discipline and hard work. There are roles where you need superior problem solving and leadership. A's don't stick around in India (the market is talent deficit and a lot of money/startups chase them) and then they leave, it sets you back a few miles in that work area. 5. try to avoid leverage and M&A's - every business gets a few good years over the 10-20 year timeline so keep your strategic flexibility to capitalise on those good years (cash, loyal and long term team, ability to raise capital etc.) 6. listen to business veterans and learn core execution from them - if things are working in the opposite direction of first principles there must be reason for it so study the "subjective" carefully 7. don't disrupt or innovate in everything - focus on the biggest leverage of innovation in your business 8. your business as in life should be easy and needs to have "flow"; if you are struggling to grow then it is time to pivot or change - there has to be a natural uplift or a market "tailwind" where you are trying to put the "lid" on the growth and not pedaling hard to grow

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🚀 Zepto’s Rapid Ascent: Built to Last or Heading for Trouble? 🚀 Zepto’s back-to-back funding rounds, including a recent $340M Series G that pushed its valuation to $5B, have made waves in the quick-commerce world. But as they scale at breakneck speed, will they sustain this momentum or face growing pains in a fiercely competitive market? ⚡ Business Model at a Glance: Zepto’s promise of 10-minute deliveries, powered by dark stores, is its game-changer. However, with high operational costs and thin margins, the pressure to balance speed with profitability is immense. Competitors like Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit and Flipkart Minutes are equally aggressive. Can Zepto continue to stand out without burning through its capital? 💼 IPO Buzz: With the recent wave of tech IPOs, Zepto is rumored to be next in line. But going public without solid profitability could expose them to market scrutiny and correction risks. Is it too soon for an IPO, or is it the perfect moment to ride the quick-commerce wave? 🔍 What’s Next?: Zepto’s future depends on their ability to scale sustainably, innovate, and navigate competition. Will they emerge as a market leader or struggle under industry pressures? #Zepto #QuickCommerce #TechUnicorn #IPO #Startups #BusinessStrategy #ECommerce #RetailTech #MarketTrends #GrowthHacking #InvestorInsights #BusinessTransformation #TechFunding #FutureOfRetail

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Zepto raises $665 million at a $3.6 billion valuation. Here's why this raise is exciting for the Qcommerce space and startup ecosystem: Zepto's repeated fundraising success is impressive. > Pioneered the 10-minute commerce game. > Reached $1 billion GMV in under 2 years. > Founders are among the youngest in the startup world. > Built an exceptional team quickly. > Raised significant funds despite strong competition from Swiggy, Blinkit, BBNow, and others. > India is leading in aggressive Qcommerce growth. Reflecting on my TinyOwl days in the early FoodTech space, competition was fierce, and investors were cautious. However, things are different now: > Markets have scaled, unlocking multi-billion dollar opportunities. > IPOs are now viable, even for third or fourth ranked players with strong financials. Investors may feel relieved, but the Qcommerce space will remain highly competitive for the next few years. Consumers, meanwhile, are spoiled for choice. Interesting times ahead.

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IIFL Fintech Fund Portfolio Delivers 9.5x Revenue Growth in Average Holding Span of 1.5 ...: India's only early-stage fintech-focused fund backed by a financial services conglomerate – the IIFL Group, has delivered a stellar performance ...

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