23 Dec , 2022 By : Monika Singh
Flipkart and PhonePe have completed their separation and both entities will continue to operate under US-based retail giant Walmart, a joint statement said on Friday. PhonePe was acquired by Flipkart Group in 2016. “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 started earlier this year,” the statement said.
Walmart will remain the majority shareholder of both business groups. “Flipkart and PhonePe are proud, homegrown Indian brands with a user base upwards of 400 million each. 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. This will help propel our vision to provide billions of Indians with financial inclusion,” PhonePe Founder and CEO Sameer Nigam said.
This year, PhonePe changed its domicile from Singapore to India. Since its launch, PhonePe has successfully digitized more than 35 million offline merchants spread across tier 2, 3, 4 cities and beyond, covering 99 per cent of pin codes in the country, the statement said. “We are proud to see PhonePe grow and thrive as a successful organization in its own right. We are confident PhonePe will continue to scale and achieve its vision of providing financial inclusion to millions of Indians,” Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said.
Meanwhile, PhonePe is planning to go public once its core businesses turn profitable, by 2023. Founded in 2015 by Nigam, Rahul Chari and Burzin Engineer, PhonePe entered into financial services in 2017 and has introduced several mutual funds and insurance products on the platform since then. The company claims to have more than 400 million registered users as well as 35 million offline merchants, covering 99 per cent of pin codes in the country, according to media reports.
Also, PhonePe is in talks to raise as much as $1 billion from General Atlantic and existing investors including Tiger Global Management, Qatar Investment Authority and Microsoft Corp. at a valuation close to $13 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg.
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