Walmart's PhonePe starts preparations for a public listing in India

India's biggest fintech firm PhonePe has started preparing for its potential initial public offering (IPO) for listing on the country's bourses, the company said on Thursday. The company was valued at USD 12 billion during its last funding round held in 2023.

"The company is commencing preparatory steps in connection with its potential IPO and plans to list on Indian exchanges. This marks a significant milestone for the company, which will celebrate its 10-year anniversary this year, and has grown to serve hundreds of millions of customers with innovative financial services and technology solutions," PhonePe said in a statement.

In December 2022, PhonePe redomiciled from Singapore to India for which it had to pay around Rs 8,000 crore in taxes to the government.

PhonePe in its annual report had said the domicile was changed to India, because the company strongly believed that as a homegrown and highly regulated Indian fintech company, it should eventually publicly list in the Indian bourses.

"Our investors, led by Walmart, paid almost Rs 8,000 crore (close to USD 1 billion) in taxes to the Indian government to accept PhonePe's domicile shift to India," the report said.

Walmart's Luxembourg-based firm FIT Holdings SARL held 83.91 per cent stake in PhonePe, General Atlantic Singapore 5.14 per cent and Phonepe's Singapore arm held 6.7 per cent stake in the firm as of March 31, 2024.

Microsoft, Qatar Investment Authority, Ribbit Capital, Tencent, Tiger Global, TVS Capital Funds, 3State, and Willoughby have also invested in the firm.
PhonePe has raised about Rs 18,000 crore from its investors.

As of March 2024, the company had about 53 crore registered users, approximately 20 crore monthly active customers. It has deployed over 50 lakh net payment devices.

PhonePe said it processes over 770 crore transactions a month, amounting to Rs 10.5 lakh crore.

The PhonePe Group recorded 74 per cent increase in revenue at Rs 5,064 crore from Rs 2,914 crore in 2023-24.

The group also reported an adjusted Profit After Tax (PAT, excluding ESOP costs) of Rs 197 crore for FY24 as against Rs 738 crore loss for FY23.

PhonePe's competitor Paytm was the first fintech firm to get listed on Indian bourses at a valuation of Rs 18,300 crore at share price of Rs 2,150 apiece.

Paytm's shares nosedived after listing and it is now trading around Rs 755 apiece.

Another fintech firm Mobikwik was listed in December 2024 in the price band of Rs 265-279 apiece. The share price of the firm has increased to about Rs 323 each.