IPO-Bound PhonePe Completes Separation From Flipkart

Ecommerce major Flipkart has completed the full ownership separation process of digital payments platform PhonePe.

As part of this transaction, existing Flipkart Singapore and PhonePe Singapore shareholders, led by Walmart, have purchased shares directly in PhonePe India. This completes the move to make PhonePe a fully India domiciled company, a process that the company said to have started earlier this year.

Following this move, Walmart will remain the majority shareholder of both the business groups.

“The Flipkart Group has developed many successful entrepreneurs and seen impactful businesses started by former employees. We are proud to see PhonePe grow and thrive as a successful organization in its own right,” Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO of Flipkart Group, said.

Setting up these businesses as separate entities will also provide value and create new opportunities for investors to participate in the Indian tech ecosystem – helping unlock and maximise enterprise value for shareholders of the two companies, PhonePe said in a statement.

Founded in December 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, PhonePe’s UPI payments solutions have digitised more than 35 Mn offline merchants spread across Tier-2, 3, 4 cities and beyond, covering 99% pin codes in the country.

The PhonePe Group was acquired by the Flipkart Group in 2016. The payment startup currently claims to have more than 400 Mn registered users.

“We are looking forward to the next phase of our growth as we invest in new businesses – like insurance, wealth management and lending, while also enabling the next wave of growth for UPI payments in India,” Sameer Nigam, founder and CEO at PhonePe, said.

It is to be noted that PhonePe also received an insurance broking licence from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) last year.

As per PhonePe, it registered a 133% year-on-year (YoY) jump in its total revenue in the financial year ending March 31, 2022. The startup posted a total consolidated revenue of INR 1,692.7 Cr in FY22 as against INR 725.3 Cr in FY21.

However, PhonePe’s net loss rose 16.4% to INR 2,013.7 Cr from INR 1,728.7 Cr in FY21 due to a rise in expenses.

Earlier this year, PhonePe revealed its plans to move its registered entity from Singapore to India, in line with the company’s plans to list on Indian stock exchanges. Later in October, PhonePe completed the process to move its domicile from Singapore to India.