An Indian FinTech unicorn named PhonePe has received US $350 million from the US Growth Equity Fund General Atlantic, valued at US $12 billion prior to the investment. Other international and local investors took part in the round as well.
The agreement is the first installment in a planned US $1 billion cash raise by PhonePe.
The financing will be used to construct new business verticals, including insurance, wealth management, and lending, as well as infrastructure like data centers and to support the upcoming UPI payments, including UPI Lite, in India.
Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, three former executives of Flipkart, founded PhonePe in 2015. After moving the FinTech startup’s headquarters to Singapore, PhonePe was purchased by the domestic e-commerce giant in 2016 for US$20 million. After Walmart, a US-based retailer purchased Flipkart for US $16 billion in 2018, it eventually joined the Walmart network.
PhonePe relocated its headquarters from Singapore to India in October of last year. The company split from Flipkart later in December because it planned to raise many billions of dollars through an IPO in the US this year.
PhonePe, which has 400 million users and surpasses Google Pay and Paytm in terms of market share, represents approximately 50% of UPI transactions in India.
