PhonePe Raises $100 Million From General Atlantic, Investors During Ongoing Fundraise

Walmart-owned Indian payments firm PhonePe on Wednesday said it had raised an additional $100 million (roughly Rs. 820 crores) from General Atlantic and other investors as part of its ongoing $1 billion (roughly Rs. 82,063 crores) fundraising to expand into the lucrative lending space.

With the latest round, PhonePe, India's most valuable payments firm with an estimated value of $12 billion (roughly Rs. 9,84,744 crores) has raised $650 million (roughly Rs. 533 crores) across four tranches from its backers, including Tiger Global.

General Atlantic had invested $350 (roughly Rs. 287 crores) million in the fintech during the same funding round in January.

At over 46 percent, PhonePe in March had the largest market share among applications running the unified payments interface (UPI) digital payments system, per data from the National Payments Corporation of India.

Recently, the digital payments firm PhonePe launched an app called Pincode on the Indian government's open network to strengthen its e-commerce business.

The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was launched last year to enable small merchants and local stores across India to access processes and technologies typically deployed by large e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Walmart.

Pincode, which will focus on hyperlocal commerce, is currently live only in Bengaluru and available on the Google Play Store and the App Store, PhonePe said in a statement. It said categories on the app will include groceries, food, pharma, electronics, home decor, and fashion.

The company is targeting 100,000 orders a day on the app by December, Chief Executive Sameer Nigam said, adding that it would not launch the service in more than 10 cities in the first year.

PhonePe already has an e-commerce platform, called Switch, on its app, which offers services including food delivery, grocery shopping, travel, hotel booking, retail fashion, and healthcare.