Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas acted as the India counsel to Mastercard in relation to its proposed investment in Pine Labs

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas acted as the India counsel to Mastercard, in relation to its proposed investment in Pine Labs. Pine Labs has two companies in India, namely, Pine Labs Private Limited and Qwikcilver Solutions Private Limited.

Pine Labs is one of Asia's leading merchant commerce platforms. Its unique cloud-based platform enables it to offer a wide range of payment acceptance and merchant commerce solutions. Its stored value platform includes issuing, processing and distributing digital gift cards for corporate customers.

Mastercard is a technology company in the global payments industry. Together, the companies will offer a suite of value-added services, including Pine Labs' end-to-end stored value solutions which will replace the paper ones now widely used by companies, retailers and people in South Asia and many other markets.

The M&A, Intellectual Property and Financial Regulatory Practices of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas advised Mastercard on the transaction. The scope of work included undertaking due diligence, general corporate advisory and review and finalization of the transaction documents from an Indian law perspective.

The transaction team was led by Akila Agrawal, Partner & Head – Mergers & Acquisitions; Megha Bhargava, Partner; with support from Gunit Singh, Associate; Shree Sinha, Associate; and Astha Tambi, Associate.

The Intellectual Property team was led by Ashwin Sapra, Partner; and Arun Prabhu, Partner; with support from Biplab Lenin, Principal Associate.

The Financial Regulatory team was led by Rohan Banerjee, Partner; with support from Rishi Ray, Associate.

Other advisors involved in the transaction included Dechert LLP (foreign legal counsel to Mastercard), J. Sagar Associates (Indian legal counsel to Mastercard for data protection related advisory) and IndusLaw (Legal counsel to Pine Labs).

The Transaction was signed on 23 Jan, 2020.

About Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas takes forward the values going back 103 years, of the erstwhile Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A. Shroff & Co., whose pre-eminence, experience and reputation of almost a century has been unparalleled in the Indian legal fraternity. Tracing its professional lineage to 1917, the Firm of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas is now the largest full-service law firm in India, with over 750 lawyers including over 130 partners, and offices in India's key business centres at Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad. The Firm advises a large, and varied client base that includes domestic and foreign commercial enterprises, financial institutions, private equity funds, venture capital funds, start-ups and governmental and regulatory bodies.