60/40 Podcast: Amrish Rau on steering Pine Labs to its IPO

This week’s 60/40 Podcast episode welcomes Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, for a wide-ranging discussion on business model, leadership lessons, cultural changes, and IPO preparations.

When Amrish took over Pine Labs in 2020, he had to reinvigorate a 20-year-old company by rapidly change its corporate culture and mapping out a new digital future that complemented its hardware business. He shares with the gang the lessons he learned from a previous startup and the reasons why he doesn’t believe that Pine Labs’ impending IPO is an exit for him or the company.

For hot takes of the week, the team covers the BluSmart and Gensol fraud case in India before wrapping up on Indonesia possibly relaxing its local content requirements in response to the Trump tariffs.

Listen on your preferred platform: Spotify | Apple | YouTube

Send us feedback or nominate topics at 6040podcast@techinasia.com.

Timestamps:
1:12 Why did Amrish take over the 20-year-old Pine Labs in 2020?
10:02 Pine Labs’ competitive moat
13:50 Reinvigorating a 20-year-old company
17:25 The best and worst day of a founder’s life
21:20 The future of payments in India
29:00 Great leaders look at input metrics
33:20 What to expect from the Pine Labs IPO
40:30 Blusmart, not so smart
52:30 Is Indonesia changing its tune on local content requirements?
1:02:40 AI taking over healthcare

60/40 is a bi-weekly podcast hosted by Prashanth Ranganathan, Peter Bithos, and Maria Li.

Special thanks to our guest, Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs.