India Roundup: Pine Labs enters payment space, and more

Merchant platform Pine Labs enters payment space with Plural

• Plural offers a set of tools that can help offline merchants take their transactions online.
• Its suite of products includes a payment gateway platform that can accept over 100 payment methods, including buy now, pay later transactions. It also has a mobile software development kit for checkout pages and a framework that enables transactions via multiple payment gateways.
• Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, said in a statement that the tools are established with the help of industry leaders such as Gaurav Munjal, CEO of Unacademy; Gokul Rajaram, an active investor and a board member of Pinterest and Coinbase; Shailendra Singh, managing director of Sequoia Capital; and Tanya Naik, head of online and omnichannel business at Pine Labs.

Investment platform We Founder Circle launches new accelerator program

• Called EvolveX, the program will provide guaranteed funding of US$20,000 for each participating startup.
• It will also connect early-stage companies to mentors from prominent businesses such as SOSV, KPMG, Accenture, and Samsung.
• Out of the startups nominated for the program, 60 of them will be shortlisted for the final round. The chosen startups will be announced in January.