PhonePe Raises $100 Million Additional Funding From General Atlantic The investment will help fuel the fintech firm's expansion plans
By Teena Jose
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Walmart-owned fintech firm PhonePe confirms that it has raised a $100 million additional tranche of investment from private equity firm General Atlantic and its co-investors at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion. This new funding is part of PhonePe's ongoing fundraise of up to $1 billion in capital, following its domicile shift to India last year. The fresh tranche of capital comes less than a month after majority shareholder Walmart infused $200 million into the company at the same valuation. PhonePe has confirmed the development. Also, the investment will help fuel the fintech firm's expansion plans.
In January this year, the Bengaluru-based unicorn raised $350 million from General Atlantic at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion, making it the most-valued fintech player in India. Other investors that backed PhonePe include Qatar Investment Authority, Microsoft, Tiger Global and a few small hedge funds. The funds were raised under the first tranche of touching $1 billion which the digital payments startup had announced early this month.
In November 2022, Walmart reported that PhonePe crossed 10 billion quarterly transactions in the September quarter. The startup is the leading player in the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) segment with 3,674.24 million transactions volume in December 2022 as reported by NPCI. PhonePe and rival GooglePay command over a solid 85% of the market share.
In February 2023, the unicorn had raised another $100 million in primary capital from Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global and TVS Capital Funds, at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion. Founded in December 2015, PhonePe was recently recognized as the most trusted brand for digital payments as per the Brand Trust Report 2022 by Trust Research Advisory (TRA).