PhonePe has raised another $200 million as part of an ongoing round. The Indian fintech giant has increased its war chest following its recent separation from parent company Flipkart, which has helped him raise $650 million in recent weeks despite market downturns. .
Walmart, which owns the majority of PhonePe, has invested $200 million in the startup. The ongoing round values Bengaluru-based PhonePe at $12 billion. PhonePe has previously said it plans to raise up to $1 billion as part of an ongoing funding round.
“We are excited about the future of PhonePe and are confident in how we will continue to expand our offering and provide access to financial services at scale to the people of India. We are delighted to have the opportunity to continue supporting PhonePe in one of the world’s most digitized, dynamic and fastest growing economies,” said Walmart International President and CEO. Judith McKenna said in a statement.
With a valuation of $12 billion, PhonePe is India’s most valuable fintech startup. Competes with Google Pay and Paytm. Paytm is expected to hit $1 billion in revenue by March this year, but its current valuation is less than his $5 billion.
PhonePe is undoubtedly the clear leader in the mobile payments market for UPI, a network built by a coalition of Indian retail banks. UPI has become the most popular way for Indians to transact online and monthly he processes over 8 billion transactions.
Seven-year-old PhonePe conducts about 50% of all these transactions. PhonePe said last week that it is on pace to process $1 trillion worth of transactions on an annual basis. Walmart, the majority owner of e-commerce giant Flipkart, said last month that the separation of Flipkart and PhonePe is “very similar to eBay and PayPal, each operating independently and with its own initiatives. can be pursued,” he said.
A concern over PhonePe’s growth was that Indian regulators were conducting market capitalization checks on each participating player, but a recent extension of the deadline to 2025 has given the startup another two years of rapid growth. paved the way for further growth. (Google’s GPay and PhonePe now process his over 80% of all UPI transactions.)
PhonePe is also slowly becoming a distribution engine, leveraging its large user base of 300 million to cross-sell products such as insurance. The startup said it plans to deploy the funds to build and expand its wealth management, lending, stockbrokerage, ONDC-based shopping, and account aggregator businesses.
Industry experts believe PhonePe’s final game could be a bank, which they say justifies its high ratings. PhonePe recorded $234.3 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2022.
According to a valuation report prepared by audit firm KPMG and filed by PhonePe in January, the company projects revenue of $325 million in calendar year 2022 and $504 million in 2023.
The startup does not expect EBIDTA, a key profitability metric, to be positive until calendar year 2025, KMPG wrote in its valuation report. not.
“We are grateful to our majority investor, Walmart, for their continued support of our long-term ambitions. , in a statement, said it is excited to build new services for Indian consumers and merchants and enable financial inclusion across the country for its next phase of growth.
