PhonePe gets another funding boost worth $100 mn from General Atlantic

PhonePe has secured an additional $100 million investment from New York-based growth equity firm General Atlantic as part of its ongoing fundraising. The latest tranche brings the total investment from General Atlantic and its co-investors in Walmart-owned PhonePe to $550 million.

Phone, in a statement, said the latest investment “reaffirms” General Atlantic’s conviction in PhonePe’s business and growth potential. With the latest primary infusion from General Atlantic, PhonePe has now raised a total of $850 million of primary capital in the current round.

PhonePe said it aims to raise up to $1 billion in capital after its domicile shift to India last year.

The current fundraising comes two months after PhonePe had raised an additional $200 million in primary capital from its parent company Walmart at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion.

Before that in February, PhonePe raised $100 million in primary capital from Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, and TVS Capital Funds, at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion.

The company plans to aggressively deploy funds to build and scale new businesses like Insurance, Wealth Management, Lending, Stockbroking, ONDC-based Shopping, and Account Aggregators. As per the company, the fundraising will also help it "turbo-charge" the next wave of growth for UPI payments in India, including UPI Lite and Credit on UPI.

The digital wallet recently launched a new shopping app called ‘Pincode’, which is built on top of the ONDC network. The app focuses on hyperlocal commerce in categories including food, grocery, electronics, pharmacy, fashion, and home décor.

Within a month of its launch, the Pincode app has surpassed 50,000 installs on the Play Store, the company said.

With nearly 450 million registered users on the PhonePe app, the company has strategically opted to launch a new app instead of integrating it into the existing one, Fortune India reported last month.

The company also launched the UPI LITE feature on its app. It allows users to initiate low-value payments under ₹200, with a single tap. The feature operates through an ‘on-device’ balance that facilitates much faster real-time payment solutions for low-value transactions such as groceries, and transit, even during the busiest time slots. Users can load up to ₹2,000 in their LITE account and make transactions of up to ₹200 or less in one go.

PhonePe had announced its separation from e-commerce major Flipkart in December 2022. Walmart, however, remains the majority shareholder in both business entities.

Like PhoenPe, despite global layoffs and macroeconomic headwinds, many domestic start-ups, including Lenskart, Mintify, Insurance Dekho, FreshtoHome foods, TI Clean Mobility, and KreditBee, have collectively raised $2.8 billion in 301 rounds in the January to March period in 2023, according to the latest funding report by Traxcn. However, this is a decline of over 75% year-on-year (YoY) as compared to $11.98 billion raised by domestic start-ups in 816 rounds in the same period last year. On a sequential basis, domestic startup funding declined by 21%.

PhonePe claims to have around 46 crore registered users, which spans 99% of pin codes in the country.