MUMBAI: Walmart-owned PhonePe is preparing for a public listing in India, joining a clutch of tech startups that are tapping the IPO route to grow and take advantage of the richer valuations the local public markets tend to offer.
The preparations are at a preliminary stage, the company said in a statement without sharing details. “Our PhonePe team has long aspired to be a public company and we are excited to be taking these early steps,” Doug McMillon, president and CEO at Walmart said during the company’s earnings call on Thursday.
PhonePe which competes with players like Paytm and Google Pay in a growing local fintech market completed separation from Flipkart and redomiciled from Singapore to India in December 2022. The move, PhonePe said, allowed it to establish a clear corporate structure with each of its new non-payment businesses as fully owned subsidiaries.
“PhonePe’sstrong top-line and bottom-line growth across its diverse business portfolio makes this a suitable time to prepare for a public listing,” the company said. Executives at Walmart said that the PhonePe business hit a total payment value (TPV) of Rs 1.7 trillion at the end of January and the company processes over 300 million daily transactions. PhonePe is currently valued at $12 billion.
A batch of startups including Zepto, Groww, Infra.Market, Pine Labs and Lenskart are preparing for IPO and eyeing to get listed on the bourses by this year. Last year, several unicorn startups like Swiggy, FirstCry and Ola Electric went public amid a hot Indian IPO market, sort of marking a revival of big tech listings after a gap of about three years.
At its Q4FY25 earnings, Walmart said that its India businesses are doing well. The growth of the international business on a year-on-year basis was however, impacted by the timing of Flipkart’s annual Big Billion Days (BBD) sale which shifted to Q3 this financial year (according to Walmart’s financial calendar) compared to Q4 last year.
The article originally appeared on The Times of India.
