technology

PhonePe bags another $100 million from General Atlantic


Digital payments major PhonePe has received another fresh infusion of $100 million from existing backer General Atlantic and its affiliate funds as part of its $1 billion primary funding, according to two people aware of the matter.

The new tranche has been raised at a $12 billion pre-money valuation, just as in the previous tranches.

With this, the digital payments firm has stacked up $750 million till date in its ongoing raise. General Atlantic and its affiliate funds have poured in a total of $450 million as part of the raise.

PhonePe had kicked off its latest fundraising round with global private equity major General Atlantic pouring in $350 million in January.

When ET reached out, a PhonePe spokesperson confirmed the development and said, “PhonePe confirms a $100 million additional tranche of investment from General Atlantic and its co-investors as part of our ongoing fundraise.”

This is the fourth tranche of funding for the digital payments major, which announced a separation of ownership from domestic ecommerce company Flipkart last December.

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Prior to this fundraise, General Atlantic held about 2.9% in PhonePe, with Flipkart parent Walmart owning roughly about 70%. The final shareholding structure is expected to be locked by the end of this primary raise. PhonePe’s last tranche was worth $200 million in March, which it raised from majority shareholder Walmart.

News of the new infusion comes at a time when PhonePe has made its ecommerce aspirations clear with the launch of its hyperlocal commerce app Pincode on the ONDC (open network for digital commerce) platform.

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It was also looking at entering the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) space with the acquisition of ZestMoney. However, as ET first reported on March 30, deal negotiations between the two sides fell through over diligence issues.

Sources now say that the company is planning to work on a BNPL product in-house and that it may lure some of ZestMoney’s employees to build its consumer credit verticals.

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