Fintech start-up PhonePe has secured $100 million from General Atlantic and its co-investors as part of its ongoing $1 billion fundraiser, reported MoneyControl. Citing people aware of the matter, the report said the latest funding is at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion.
PhonePe, in January, announced that it would raise $1 billion in tranches at a $12 billion valuation. Since then, the unicorn fintech company has raised $400 million from General Atlantic, $100 million from Tiger Global Management, Ribbit Capital, and TVS Capital, and $200 million from Walmart, which is also its largest stakeholder, the report said.
PhonePe's fundraising coincides with Paytm's devaluation by more than 50 per cent since going public in November 2021, the report noted. As of April 12, Paytm has a total market value of just over $5.2 billion.
The funding comes after PhonePe announced its spin-off from e-commerce firm Flipkart in December. A spin-off from Flipkart made PhonePe an Indian-domicile business.
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The company has previously said that it intends to use these funds to scale new avenues like lending, stockbroking, ONDC (open network for digital commerce)-based shopping, and account aggregators over the coming years in addition to growing its payments and insurance businesses in India. This month PhonePe launched Pincode, a consumer-facing application, which will be a part of the ONDC framework.
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PhonePe was established in 2015 by former Flipkart executives Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer. It currently has over 400 million registered customers and dominates the market for UPI transactions. The company has a 47 per cent market share in terms of monthly UPI volumes.
In addition to bill and utility payments, the company's platform now enables consumers to purchase gold, insurance, and mutual funds in 2017. This was part of the company's 2017 expansion into financial services.
PhonePe has purchased GigIndia, WealthDesk, OpenQ, and completed the acquisition of IndusOS over the past year.