Withering the storm, Phonepe becomes India’s most valuable fintech firm at $12 bn
Indian startups are battling the long funding winter especially the mature late stage startups. The deals in the $50+ million ranges has almost become a thing of the past. However, Phonepe being the lone exception which has successfully withered this rough storm and went to raise $100 million today from a clutch of blue chip investors Ribit capital, Tiger Global and TVS Capital. Phonepe’s valuation leap jumped to $12 billion and in the process became India’s most valuable fintech startup and also India’s 2nd most valuable unicorn only behind Byjus.
“We are excited to continue our partnership with PhonePe as they lead the digital payments sector in India, a market we believe is still in the early stages with significant growth potential ahead,” said said Scott Shleifer, a Partner at Tiger Global, in a statement.
At a $12 billion valuation, PhonePe is India’s most valuable fintech startup. It competes with Google Pay and Paytm. Paytm, which expects to reach $1 billion revenue by March this year, is currently valued at $4.5 billion.
PhonePe, to be sure, is the clear leader in the mobile payments market on UPI, a network built by a coalition of retail banks in India. UPI has become the most popular way Indians transact online, and processes more than 8 billion transactions a month. Seven-year-old PhonePe commands about 50% of all these transactions.
A concern for PhonePe’s growth was Indian regulators enforcing a market cap check on each player, but the deadline for the new guidelines was extended last month and now won’t come into effect until 2025, giving PhonePe another two years of fast-growth.
PhonePe is slowly using its large 300 million user base to cross-sell them a range of products including insurance. There’s also speculation that PhonePe might eventually try to become a bank, which in part better justifies its current valuation. PhonePe clocked a revenue of $234.3 million in the first nine months of 2022.
PhonePe projects a revenue of $325 million for the calendar year 2022 and $504 million for 2023, according to a valuation report prepared by the auditing firm KPMG and filed by PhonePe last month.
The startup doesn’t expect to turn EBIDTA positive, a key profitability metric, until calendar year 2025, KMPG wrote in its valuation report. PhonePe’s financials and metrics from the valuation report have not been previously reported.
“We are privileged to have a great set of leading global investors, both existing and new, who believe in our mission of building massive technology platforms to bring at-scale financial and digital inclusion in India,” said Sameer Nigam, co-founder and chief executive of PhonePe, in a statement.
