Wednesday, 31 May 2023, Bengaluru, India
Introduction:
On Monday, the global private equity firm General Atlantic revealed that it has invested an extra $100 million (820 crores) in General Atlantic Doubles Down On Investment Walmart Inc.’s digital payments business PhonePe. As part of its continuous fundraising efforts, PhonePe has made this contribution.
In terms of UPI transactions, General Atlantic has given the funds to India’s biggest fintech firm while keeping the same valuation as the prior transaction. Similar funds were invested in PhonePe by the PE firm last month, valuing the business at $12 billion.
The total investment from the company and its co-investors now totals $550 million, according to a statement from General Atlantic. The asset management firm gave PhonePe its initial $350 million infusion in January of this year.
According to the company, PhonePe has so far raised $850 million of the $1 billion it aimed to raise. As part of its significant fundraising efforts, PhonePe also got $200 million from its parent firm, Walmart, along with investments totaling $100 million from Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, and TVS Capital.
The business had stated at the time of announcing its $1 billion fundraise that it planned to use the money to expand its infrastructure, including the construction of data centers, and to provide financial services solutions at scale in the nation.
It also has ambitions to scale UPI payments in India, including UPI light and credit on UPI, as well as invest in new companies including insurance, wealth management, lending, and Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC)-based shopping.
The former CEO of a financial company has lately been promoted to lead the unicorn’s insurance division.
Recent announcements from PhonePe include a move to India and a separation from Flipkart, the largest online retailer owned by Walmart. The company’s stockholders lost a whopping 8,000 crore in taxes as a result of the domicile change. The Flipkart Group purchased PhonePe in 2016.
CEO Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer founded PhonePe in December 2015. Along with mutual funds and insurance products, it provides several financial and payment services. It competes in India’s digital payments market with the publicly traded Paytm and Google Pay.
Due to the platform processing nearly 47% of all UPI transactions in March, it was ranked as the top UPI app. Overall, it handled transactions totaling just about 407.63 billion and $7.07 billion. Google Pay, Paytm, and PhonePe were the next two. The combined market share of these three platforms was close to 96%.
