Pine Labs Acquires Qwikcilver, A Gift Card Provider For $110 Million

Unicorn startup Pine Labs has acquired a digital gift card firm Qwikcilver, a startup that is backed by Amazon for $110 million.

Bengaluru-based Qwikcilver Solutions is co-founded by Kumar Sudarsan and Pratap T P in 2008 The startup is one-stop providers for various stored value cards.

The startup offers gift cards and stored value solutions for retail and corporate customers. Through digital gift cards, the company enables various businesses to offer more options to the customers.

Qwikcilver offers pre-paid cards, e-promotion cards, discount cards, electronic and physical gift cards, loyalty programs and more virtual card-based programs to its retail customers.

Its corporate clients include Oberoi Hotels, Flipkart, Amazon, and Big Bazaar. The Solutions raised a total of $20M from the investors including the recent Sistema Asia Fund, Amazon, and Helion Venture Partners. The startup’s annual revenue is of $15M. It competes with Angoor, Giveter, and Giftcardsindia.in.

Pine Labs also owns a gifting business called Pine Perks in 2015 which is used by nearly 600 organizations across the sectors like banking, pharmaceutical, FMCG, insurance, and telecom industries.

With this acquisition, Pine Labs is focusing on adding more value to the merchants and wants to increase the market as the growth rate of gift cards are doubled annually.

Kumar Sudarsan co-founder at Qwikcilver, in a statement, said “We have built a robust and versatile stored value and gift card technology platform. We have also built a strong network and enduring strategic brand relationships with the best brands in India, in the Middle East and in the South East Asian markets.”

Also adds, “With Pine Labs, we have the potential and ability to significantly scale the gift card category and drive consumer adoption with novel products and solutions.”

Pine Labs is a Point Of Sale (POS) solutions that simplify payment acceptance for issuers, brands, and merchants by providing credit and debit card payments besides transactions that use QR Codes, e-wallets, and the UPI.

The 21-year-old company has raised $125 million from PayPal and Temasek and additionally $82 million from private equity fund Actis and Altimeter Capital, a California-based investment firm.