PhonePe Raises Another $100 Mn From Ribbit Capital, Others

Walmart-led fintech unicorn PhonePe has raised $100 Mn in primary capital from Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global and TVS Capital Funds.

PhonePe will use the proceeds to scale up its payments and insurance businesses in India. It will also deploy funds to launch and aggressively scale new businesses such as lending, stockbroking, ONDC-based shopping and account aggregators over the next few years. 

According to PhonePe, it has set a target of raising capital up to the tune of $1 Bn from global and Indian high-net-worth (HNIs) investors, starting from January this year. 

It is prudent to note here that, PhonePe has raised $450 Mn from investors so far this year after shifting its domicile to India. 

In January, it secured $350 Mn in a fundraising round led by General Atlantic along with other investors. With this funding PhonePe entered the decacorn club as it had a pre-money valuation at $12 Bn.

The latest fundraiser announcement has come a week after the fintech unicorn started supporting cross-border UPI transactions in the UAE, Singapore, Mauritius, Nepal and Bhutan.

“I would like to thank Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global and TVS Capital Funds for reposing their faith in us. We are privileged to have a great set of leading global investors, both existing and new, who believe in our mission of building massive technology platforms to bring at-scale financial and digital inclusion in India,” said Sameer Nigam, CEO and founder of PhonePe.  

Set up in December 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer, the online payment app claims to operate a base of more than 440 Mn registered users. 

As per PhonePe, it has offered services to more than 3.5 Cr offline merchants working in Tier-II cities and beyond. Moreover, the fintech giant is said to have processed more than 45% of the transactions on the BBPS (Bharat Bill Pay System) platform.

“PhonePe lives by the same values as we do at Ribbit. We both believe that better money makes life better. PhonePe’s relentless pursuit of this principle in serving consumers and businesses all across India is a mission to live for,” said Micky Malka, founder of Ribbit Capital. 

It is interesting to note that the decacorn paid INR 8,000 Cr for shifting its domicile from Singapore to India, which happened in October last year. PhonePe’s CEO Sameer Nigam made this revelation during a YouTube conversation with the company’s CTO Rahul Chari.

During the discussion, Nigam also shared that as many as 20 unicorns would shift their domicile to India if the Centre eases tax regulations. 

As per the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Walmart-owned fintech unicorn captured about 50% of the total UPI transactions processed in December, 2022. It processed nearly 367.42 Cr transactions worth INR 6.49 Lakh Cr in December last year. 

In India’s fintech space, it locks horns with Paytm, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay.

In FY2022, it posted a total consolidated revenue of INR 1,692.7 Cr in FY22 as compared to INR 725.3 Cr revenue clocked in FY21. However, its total expenses grew 1.5X to INR 3,705.6 Cr in FY22 from INR 2,456.8 Cr in FY21 owing to its widening of its net loss.

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