Did you know that India’s 28th unicorn, Pine Labs founded in 1998, did not enter the mainstream payments space until 2009?

Back in the 1990s, India had just opened its doors to globalization and the economy was changing rapidly. ATM services had slowly begun growing but merchants needed a simpler solution to accept card payments.

To resolve the concerns of these merchants, three friends, Lokvir Kapoor, Rajul Garg, and Tarun Upadhyay founded Pine Labs. What had started off as a simple card-based payment and loyalty program, has today become a global fintech firm.

Co-founder Lokvir had studied BTech in Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. Before starting Pine Labs, he worked with Schlumberger in the areas of financial management and business development.

Co-founders, Rajul, and Tarun are both IIT-Delhi alumni and they studied B.Tech in Computer Science and MSc. in Computer Application respectively.

The two also founded IndusLogic, a digital services company that would go on to become a global solution provider firm, and Fortune 500 company, GlobalLogic.

In 2009, PineLabs introduced its Point of Sale (PoS) machines to merchants, a step that would put them on track to become India’s 28th unicorn. Through this, the fintech company connected the merchants to banks and other financial services.