PhonePe Raises Another $200 Million From Its Largest Shareholder Walmart

The fintech platform PhonePe has revealed that it has raised an extra $200 million in primary capital from Walmart at a $12 billion pre-money valuation.

According to a company statement, the company is in the process of financing $1 billion in order to complete its relocation to India, which has been in progress since last year. The firm has also already raised $650 million from a number of international investors.

The investment will be used to launch and grow new enterprises in the areas of account aggregators, lending, wealth management, insurance, and stockbroking. Also, the money raised will assist PhonePe in launching its upcoming growth phases in the UPI payments industry, including UPI Lite and Credit on UPI.

Statement by Founder & CEO of PhonePe

Sameer Nigam, the founder, and CEO of the fintech business commented on this event by saying, “We would like to thank Walmart, our primary investor, for their continuous support of our long-term objectives. We are enthusiastic about the next stage of our growth as we develop new products and services for Indian customers and businesses while promoting financial inclusion all over the country”.

Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, ex-executives of Flipkart, launched PhonePe in 2015. In 2016, the firm formed by Sachin and Binny Bansal purchased PhonePe. Walmart purchased Flipkart in 2018, and PhonePe was included in the deal. After NGPay and FX Mart Pvt. Ltd, the digital payments startup was Flipkart’s third significant acquisition in the industry at the time.

PhonePe, a fintech company based in India but headquartered in Singapore, was forced to pay Rs 8,000 crore to its investors in January of this year. During that time, Sameer Nigam, co-founder, and CEO of PhonePe stated in a public statement that returning to India was the right choice because it is where the firm was founded and is primarily focused.

“I believe the decision to go to India was the right one for PhonePe’s objective, which is to address at-scale financial inclusion and digitalization. India is where we started and where we are focused. And to that end, the shift of domicile to India for PhonePe as a business and as a company is the proper solution for a variety of reasons, such as being a highly regulated firm and wishing to eventually list here”, he had said.