Pine Labs appoints former Razorpay executive Jayaram Karthik as COO

Karthik will lead operations and merchant experience across India and international markets as Pine Labs pursues greater operational standardisation across its payments network.

— Source publishedWed, 2 Sept, 2026, 19:45 IST·First seen Wed, 2 Sept, 2026, 20:01 IST·Source Business Standard · Companies

What happened

Pine Labs appointed former Razorpay executive Jayaram Karthik as COO to lead operations and merchant experience across India and international markets,

Key facts

  • Operates in more than 20 countries
  • Jayaram Karthik has over 25 years of experience
  • Q1FY27 consolidated net profit: ₹19.57 crore
  • Q1FY26 consolidated net profit: ₹4.79 crore
  • Q4FY26 net profit: ₹59.36 crore
  • Q1FY27 profit rose fourfold year-on-year
  • Q1FY27 profit fell 67% quarter-on-quarter
  • Q1FY27 effective tax rate: 48%
  • Expected FY27 tax rate: 28-30%
  • Expected tax rate from FY28: around 25-26%

Why this matters

Pine Labs’ addition of a former Razorpay executive underscores its intent to build a more globally coordinated payments platform, potentially improving its partnership and acquisition readiness.

What to watch

  • Disclosure of new operating leadership hires or regional reporting-line changes.
  • Evidence of unified merchant app, support tooling, onboarding flows or settlement dashboards across markets.
  • Changes in merchant activation times, device deployment turnaround, transaction success rates or support SLAs.
  • International market launches, partnerships or acquisitions followed by operational integration announcements.
  • Signals of merchant churn, service complaints, regulatory delays or restructuring costs during standardisation.
  • Standardise merchant onboarding, KYC, settlement exception handling and customer-support SLAs across core markets.
  • Review POS/device deployment, field-service and merchant success costs to identify margin improvement opportunities.
  • Build common operating metrics for activation rates, transaction success, support resolution, merchant retention and cross-sell.
  • Increase senior operating hires in international markets or appoint regional leaders reporting into the COO.
  • Tighten integrations and joint service models with banks, acquirers, payment networks and commerce-platform partners.