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Fintech platform Pine Labs has appointed ex-Razorpay SVP Jayaram Karthik as its COO, as the company looks to strengthen its operational capabilities and support its next phase of growth. Karthik will lead operations and merchant experiences across India and Pine Labs’ international markets. His mandate will include building technology-enabled operating models aimed at creating seamless, trusted and locally relevant experiences for merchants. Prior to joining Pine Labs, Karthik served as the SVP of business operations for rival payments startup Razorpay for over half a decade. Before that, he held senior operating roles at American Express, Citibank, Amazon, and Tata Play. Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau said the fintech’s future growth will depend not only on its products but also on how effectively technology and operations are integrated to deliver customer experiences. The company currently operates across more than 20 countries, making operational standardisation increasingly important as it expands its global footprint, Rau added. Karthik said his focus at Pine Labs would be on simplifying customer experiences by bringing technology, operations, and experience together. The appointment comes as Pine Labs continues to build its international presence. Its international business grew at a 44% CAGR over the past three years and contributed around 15% of revenue in FY26. Its international revenue crossed ₹400 Cr during the year. In FY26, the company reported revenue from operations of ₹2,711 Cr, up 19% YoY, while adjusted EBITDA rose 57% to ₹559 Cr. It reported a net profit of ₹113 Cr as against a loss of ₹145 Cr in FY25. In the June quarter of the ongoing fiscal, its consolidated revenue from operations rose 19.6% YoY to ₹736.9 Cr, while net profit more than quadrupled to ₹19.6 Cr. Sequentially, the company’s profit declined 67% from ₹59.4 Cr. Pine Labs has also been expanding its product portfolio. It recently launched the Pine Labs Payment Protocol (P3P), which is an infrastructure layer allowing AI agents to make UPI payments autonomously after a consumer authorises a mandate. The company is also working to extend the protocol to card payments. It has also developed SignalIQ, an AI-powered bank statement analyser and underwriting engine. Pine Labs is also looking to embed AI across both its internal operations and customer-facing products. The company invested around ₹24 Cr in AI and R&D initiatives in FY26, including ₹20 Cr towards AI capabilities, technology infrastructure and process automation, and another ₹4 Cr on technologies such as MCP and RAG. These investments have helped cut software testing cycle times by more than 95%, while Pine Labs estimates a 25% improvement in developer productivity and an 80% reduction in initial incident analysis time. Shares of Pine Labs ended today’s trading session 1.5% higher at ₹162.25 on the BSE.
document fetched 2026-09-03 03:01 · canonical https://inc42.com/buzz/pine-labs-appoints-ex-amazon-razorpay-executive-jayaram-karthik-as-coo