Who are Pine labs? : Queens of Disaggregation

Continuing from last week, let us examine how many others, copied Uber model. We have quite a few companies that are doing well based on this model. If you want to know more about the model, please go ahead and read this HBR article.

HBR refers to this model as “Network Orchestrators” and claims that these businesses create more value compared to other business models and hence lead to much higher valuation for the companies using this model some examples are eBay, Red Hat, Visa, Uber, Tripadvisor, and Alibaba.

I like the way Pine Labs have come up, they are in a way an Indian competition for Visa / Mastercard in the long run. So what do they do?

Extracted are some details from their own website,

“Pine labs is a leading provider of retail POS (Point of sale) solutions that simplify payment acceptance, while creating business opportunities for Issuers, merchants and brands to connect with consumers.

Pine Labs began its journey with specialty payment and loyalty solutions for closed-user group applications for Retail Petroleum industry. Today it has evolved into a payment acceptance partner choice for more than 85,000+ retailers, ranging from large worldwide enterprises with wide network across India to locally-owned small businesses.

What makes Pine Labs a market leader today is constant innovation to develop new robust solutions which went beyond payment acceptance and helped retailers to acquire and engage customers at Point of Sale. Pine Labs merchants and partners get a robust platform to create new revenue streams with best in class value added solutions like Instant EMI, Instant Discounts, Cash Back Programs, PaybyPoints, Loyalty Solution, Gift Solution, e-Wallet, Targeted Promotions, Dynamic Currency Conversion etc.”

How did they do this?

Just remember this word “platform”, it is the way this company does generate value for their own network and has become an upcoming network orchestrator.

Do some research on them and think about what could make them different? Next week, I will put across the things that I have been able to ascertain and then we can exchange notes.

So stay tuned.