Following its full separation from Flipkart and change of domicile to India, fintech platform PhonePe on Thursday announced that it has raised $350 million in funding from global growth equity firm General Atlantic at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion.
Marquee Global and Indian investors are also participating in the round. The investment marks the first tranche of an up to $1 billion total fundraise that commenced this month.
PhonePe plans to deploy the new funds to make significant investments in infrastructure, including the development of data centers and help build financial services offerings at scale in the country.
The company also plans to invest in new businesses, including insurance, wealth management, and lending.
Founded in December 2015, PhonePe today has over 400 million registered users, and it has also digitised over 35 million offline merchants.
“PhonePe is proud to help lead India’s country-wide digitisation efforts and believes that this powerful public-private collaboration has made the Indian digital ecosystem a global exemplar,” said Sameer Nigam, Founder and CEO at PhonePe.
“We look forward to delivering the next phase of our growth by investing in new business verticals like insurance, wealth management and lending, while also facilitating the next wave of growth for UPI payments in India," he added.
PhonePe also recently announced a full separation from the Flipkart Group. After a partial separation from Flipkart in December 2020, a number of Flipkart shareholders, led by Walmart, acquired shares in the recent separation.
This move will allow both companies to chart their own growth paths and build their businesses independently.