In little more than a month’s time, Walmart Inc-backed financial technology company PhonePe has raised another $100 million investment from global private equity firm General Atlantic as part of its ongoing fundraise.
With this latest primary infusion from General Atlantic, PhonePe has now raised a total of $850 million of primary capital in the current round, the company said in a statement.
PhonePe aims to raise up to $1 billion in its ongoing funding round.
The company had raised $100 million led by General Atlantic at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion last month. In March, PhonePe has secured $200 million from majority shareholder Walmart while in February it had raised $100 million from Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, and TVS Capital Funds.
General Atlantic had also led the company’s $350-million financing round in January. This latest tranche brings the total investment from General Atlantic and its co-investors to $550 million, the statement added.
In the past, the company has said it will use the funds to build and scale new businesses like insurance, wealth management, lending, stockbroking, ONDC-based shopping, and account aggregators. The fundraising will also help PhonePe turbo-charge the next wave of growth for UPI payments in India, including UPI lite and Credit on UPI, the company said.
In the highly competitive UPI space in India, PhonePe competes with the likes of Google Pay and Paytm.
The total value of UPI transactions rose 14% to Rs 14.1 lakh crore in March, compared to Rs 12.35 lakh crore in February, according to data by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The top three players – PhonePe, Google and Paytm – accounted for nearly 94% of the total number of transactions and 96% of all UPI transactions by value in March.
PhonePe remained the top UPI app, processing 407.63 crore transactions worth Rs7.07 lakh crore, commanding a marketshare of about 49.4% in the months. Google Pay and Paytm retained second and third positions, respectively.
