Binny Bansal Makes A Comeback, To Join PhonePe’s Board Of Directors

Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal is set to join PhonePe’s board of directors, as the digital payments partially sold its stake to its parent company Walmart.  

Bansal will be joining PhonePe co-founders Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari and Rohit Bhagat on the board.

Bhagat currently serves as an independent director at PhonePe’s largest stakeholder Flipkart Private Ltd and private sector lender Axis Bank Ltd., and its fintech payments entity, Freecharge.

There will be two other independent directors from Walmart appointed to PhonePe’s board, as the Bengaluru-based digital payments major looks to add more senior advisors from the BFSI sector to its board.

Flipkart co-founder and former group chief executive Binny Bansal had abruptly resigned from the e-commerce major in November 2018. After his exit, he had co-founded startup consultancy xto10x Technologies.

Founded in 2015 by Burzin Engineer, Rahul Chari and Sameer Nigam, PhonePe was acquired by Flipkart in April 2016, nearly five months after the digital payments company had been incorporated. 

PhonePe claims to have more than 250 Mn registered users with over 100 Mn monthly active users (MAU) generating nearly 1 Bn digital payment transactions in October 2020. Among third-party payment apps (TPAPs) on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) network, PhonePe leads with 42% market share in terms of the total volume of UPI transactions. 

In April this year, PhonePe had received $28 Mn in capital infusion from Flipkart. The fund infusion had come at a time when it had been looking to raise funds to compete in the tight payments industry in India. 

The total infusion till date infusion of Flipkart into PhonePe stands at $928 Mn. PhonePe Singapore is a fully-owned subsidiary of Flipkart Internet, the ecommerce major’s Singapore-based entity.

According to reports, Bansal is also planning to set up a $300-$400 Mn venture capital fund to target early-stage startups. The new VC fund will look for opportunities to invest in Southeast Asian startups, but its primary focus will be on Indian startups. Bansal will reportedly start off as a general partner (GP) and anchor investor. With time, he will also get other investors on board.

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