The company is hoping to raise the funds from General Atlantic, Tiger Global Management, Qatar Investment Authority, and Microsoft Corp in a funding round that’s expected to close by the end of the year. If everything goes its way, Walmart-backed PhonePe's valuation could come close to USD 13 billion.
According to livemint.com, PhonePe has moved its headquarters to India from Singapore in order to prepare for an initial public offering, which could be 18 to 24 months away. Moreover, the company will soon operate directly under Walmart instead of under Flipkart, the ecommerce platform that acquired PhonePe in 2016. In the same year, the company launched the PhonePe app, which is based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
The news of PhonePe's funding efforts comes in the context of India’s declining startup funding landscape, as companies are letting people go and postponing plans to go public as valuations plummet. According to techcrunch.com, Indian startups raised USD 3 billion by the end of September 2022, which is down 57% from the previous quarter and 80% year-over-year.
The same source reveals that funding has been down globally by 53% year-on-year and 33% quarter-on-quarter. Tracxn officials revealed that India is currently experiencing a funding slowdown which is expected to continue for the next 12 to 18 months. Furthermore, the effects of the funding slowdown are expected to intensify going forward, which means that things will get worse before they get better.
In Q3, the Indian startup ecosystem took part in 334 funding rounds, which is down from 674 in Q3 2021. The check sizes are also increasingly getting smaller for startups across all funding stages.
In November 2022, PhonePe has been reported to acquire Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) ZestMoney. While the size of the deal couldn’t be determined, the sale could potentially value ZestMoney much lower than its previous financing round in 2021 when its valuation was placed at around USD 400 million.
According to the Economic Times, the BNPL platform has been looking for a buyer as it struggled to raise new funds from tech investors. The BNPL sector has also been facing serious regulatory scrutiny as the Reserve Bank of India introduced a set of rules affecting these businesses.
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