PhonePe receives $100 mn boost as General Atlantic doubles down on investment
Global private equity firm General Atlantic announced on Monday that it has injected an additional $100 million ( ₹820 crore) into PhonePe, the digital payments company owned by Walmart Inc.
This investment comes as part of PhonePe’s ongoing fundraising efforts.
General Atlantic has allocated the capital to India’s largest fintech startup in terms of UPI transactions, maintaining the same valuation as the previous transaction.
Last month, the PE fund invested a similar amount in PhonePe, valuing the company at $12 billion.
In a statement, General Atlantic revealed that this latest installment brings the cumulative investment from the firm and its co-investors to $550 million.
Earlier this year, in January, the asset management company initially infused $350 million into PhonePe.
Thus far, PhonePe has secured $850 million in funding as part of its target to raise $1 billion, the company confirmed. In addition to this achievement, PhonePe received a $100 million investment from Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, and TVS Capital, along with $200 million from its parent company, Walmart, as part of its extensive fundraising efforts.
PhonePe is looking to deploy the funds to strengthen its infrastructure, including the development of data centres, and to build financial services offerings at scale in the country, the company had said at the time of announcing its $1 billion fundraise.
It also plans to invest in new businesses, including insurance, wealth management, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC)-based shopping, and lending as well as scale UPI payments in India, including UPI lite and credit on UPI.
The fintech unicorn has recently elevated the chief executive officer of an ex-fintech startup, to head its insurance vertical.
PhonePe recently announced its change of domicile to India and a spin-off from Walmart-owned e-commerce major Flipkart.
The domicile shift cost the firm’s investors a whopping ₹8,000 crore in taxes. PhonePe was acquired by the Flipkart Group in 2016.
PhonePe was founded in December 2015 by CEO Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer. It offers several payments and financial services, including mutual funds and insurance products. It pits against the publicly listed Paytm and Google Pay in India’s digital payments space.
The platform stood as the top UPI app in the month of March as it processed nearly 47% of all UPI transactions. In total, it processed nearly 407.63 crore transactions worth ₹7.07 lakh crore.
PhonePe was followed by Google Pay and Paytm. In total, these three platforms accounted for nearly 96% of the total market share.
Bylivemint
