Nitish Asthana will be the new COO & President of the Noida based B2B Fintech startup Pine Labs. Asthana will join the newly appointed CEO Amirsh Rau in ramping up Pine Lab’s finance operation and merchant acquisition as it looks to consolidate its position in India and South East Asian market.
Asthana is a big name who hails from one of the biggest companies in the Fintech payment space Fiserv (formally known as First Data). Fiserv handles almost 45% of America’s debit and credit card transactions and is present across 100 countries. The company recently announced that it will invest $500 Mn in the next five years to consolidate its market share further.
As for Asthana, he was the regional MD of Fiserv for Sri Lanka and India region. As a regional MD, he was responsible for increasing merchant acquisitions in these two respective countries. He also looked after ICICI Merchant Services, a joint venture between Fiserv and ICICI Bank and supposedly one of the leading players in POS and payment gateway solutions. The services reached across 190 cities, according to the information available on ICICI Bank’s official website.
Asthana’s appointment completes the rejig of Pine Labs top management. Notably, Rau was appointed as the CEO of Pine Labs barely few months ago, replacing Vick Bandra.
Both Asthana and Rau certainly look like a good team on the paper, with the latter especially having won lot of recognition in India’s Fintech industry. Rau was not only one of the top executives in PayU but was also a Cofounder of a highly successful Fintech startup Citrus Payments, which was actually acquired by PayU in 2019 for $150 Mn.
Commenting on his appointment, B Amrish Rau, CEO, Pine Labs, said, “Nitish brings with him a wealth of experience in the payment and fintech space. He is one of the classic successful executives, who is cut out for an entrepreneurial journey.”
“At Pine Labs, we are on a mission to re-define merchant payments and commerce and Nitish’s diverse knowledge and insights will play a pivotal role in accelerating innovation within the company and ensure operational excellence. We are excited to welcome Nitish to the Pine Labs family,” Rau further added.
Asthana and Rau now face the challenging task of fomenting Pine Labs growth in a highly competitive B2B payments market, with the challenge of expediting the company’s growth in the highly lucrative South East Asian market assuming a huge importance.
