Fintech unicorn Pine Labs acquires Saluto Wellness

The company did not comment on questions about transaction value.

Sequoia-backed Pine Labs provides solutions to merchants across sectors such as electronics, food and beverage, fashion, pharmacy, telecom and airlines. In 2019, they had acquired Qwikcilver, a brand that offers prepaid, stored value and gift card solutions to companies in sectors such as e-commerce, FMCG, banking and financial services.

The agreement will help Pine Labs enhance its issuing business Qwikcilver’s offering across employee rewards and recognition, customer loyalty and channel partner programs for medium and large enterprises.

“With Saluto’s platform, we expect to improve our leadership across corporate rewards, recognition, incentive and engagement programs,” said Kumar Sudarsan, Issuing Business, Pine Labs. “Their solution, integrated with our offerings, will help us deliver more programs to our existing enterprise customers – resulting in larger and longer-term engagements.”

Founded in 2017 by Siva Kumar and Anoop Nambiar, Bengaluru-based Saluto offers a digital platform to businesses to improve engagement with employees, consumers and channel partners. It designs programs for employee rewards, recognition and wellness, customer referrals, promotions, loyalty, among others.

“Our enterprise solutions are currently used across various industry verticals and with this acquisition of Pine Labs, we will be able to further scale our business,” said K Siva Kumar, CEO, Saluto Wellness.

Last March, Pine Labs had raised $50 million at a $5 billion valuation from Vitruvian Partners. Before that, it had raised about $150 million from Alpha Wave Ventures in a funding round.

The company has since bought stakes in several companies. It acquired Bengaluru-based Setu, an API (application programming interface) infrastructure fintech startup for $70 million to $75 million in June 2022 and payment solutions provider Mosambee in April 2022.

In February, it acquired payments startup Qfix Infocomm, for an undisclosed amount.

The point-of-sale (PoS) major has also invested to scale Plural, the online payment products brand, to grow beyond offline channels.

Last week, Pine Labs said it has entered the United Arab Emirates (UAE) market through partnerships with local banks and financial institutions, expanding its global footprint beyond India and Malaysia.