PhonePe eyes $10.5B valuation for its IPO in India
What's the story
Walmart-backed Indian fintech giant PhonePe is gearing up for an initial public offering (IPO) at a valuation between $9 billion and $10.5 billion, according to Reuters. The move could raise between $900 million and $1.05 billion for the company. However, this would be a decrease from its last private market valuation of $12 billion in 2023 when it raised $100 million.
Stake divestment
Walmart to reduce stake by 12%
In the upcoming IPO, Walmart plans to reduce its stake in PhonePe by about 12%. Meanwhile, Tiger Global and Microsoft have also decided to exit their stakes. The three stakeholders will collectively sell around 50.7 million shares during this offering. Notably, PhonePe won't be issuing any new shares as part of this process.
IPO schedule
PhonePe filed for IPO in September
PhonePe filed for its IPO in September last year and hopes to finish the process by April this year. However, the schedule could change depending on the capital market conditions, including any effects from the Middle East conflict. If successful, PhonePe's listing would become India's second-largest fintech IPO after Paytm's $20 billion listing in 2021.
User statistics
Position in Indian payments market
PhonePe, which competes with Google Pay and Paytm in India, has over 650 million registered users. It processed almost 10 billion of the 21.7 billion transactions on India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in January, regulatory data showed. However, payments in India are still a low-margin business due to restrictions on charging fees for this instant payment service introduced by the government in 2016.