New Delhi: PhonePe has secured an additional $100 million in funding from General Atlantic and its co-investors as part of its ongoing $1 billion fundraising round. This latest investment brings the total amount raised by PhonePe this year to $850 million and values the company at $12 billion.
Earlier in January, PhonePe had announced that it had raised $1 billion in multiple tranches at the same valuation of $12 billion. Since then, the fintech unicorn has received $550 million from General Atlantic, $100 million from Tiger Global Management, Ribbit Capital, and TVS Capital, and $200 million from its largest shareholder, Walmart.
Moneycontrol first reported in October that PhonePe was seeking new funding from General Atlantic and others at a $12 billion valuation. This recent funding round comes after PhonePe’s spin-off from e-commerce giant Flipkart, which was announced in December. The spin-off also marked PhonePe’s complete transition into an Indian-domiciled company, a process that began in 2022.
PhonePe plans to utilize the funds to expand its payments and insurance businesses in India, as well as to launch and aggressively scale new ventures like lending, stockbroking, ONDC-based shopping (open network for digital commerce), and account aggregators in the coming years. In April, the company launched Pincode, a consumer-facing application integrated with the ONDC framework to enhance its e-commerce efforts. In an interview, Sameer Nigam, the co-founder and CEO of PhonePe, revealed that the company had initiated digital lending pilots for merchants and is preparing for an upcoming launch.
Founded in 2015 by former Flipkart executives Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, PhonePe boasts over 400 million registered users and holds a dominant position in Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions. It commands a 47% market share in terms of monthly UPI volumes. In 2017, the company expanded its services to include financial offerings, enabling customers to purchase gold, insurance, and mutual funds and make bill and utility payments through its platform.
PhonePe’s latest funding round underscores the confidence and support it has garnered from prominent investors, signalling its strong growth potential in India’s fintech landscape. With its robust user base and innovative range of services, the company is well-positioned to continue its expansion and further strengthen its market leadership.
