Walmart-backed fintech company PhonePe is targeting a valuation of between $9 billion and $10.5 billion in its upcoming initial public offering in India, according to people familiar with the matter, as reported by Reuters.
The IPO could raise roughly $900 million to $1.05 billion, making it one of the largest fintech listings in the country in recent years.
The planned listing would value PhonePe below the $12 billion valuation it reached in a private funding round in 2023. Still, the company remains one of India’s most dominant digital payments platforms and a key player in the country’s rapidly growing fintech ecosystem.
Walmart, Microsoft, and Tiger Global set to sell shares
According to Reuters, the IPO will mainly consist of existing investors selling shares rather than issuing new stock. Walmart, which currently backs PhonePe, plans to reduce its stake by about 12% through the offering.
Other major investors, including Microsoft and Tiger Global, are expected to exit their holdings. Together, these investors will sell around 50.7 million shares, according to the company’s IPO filing.
PhonePe first filed for its IPO in September 2025, and sources told Reuters that the company aims to complete the listing by April, although the timeline could shift depending on market conditions.
Dominant player in India’s digital payments boom
PhonePe has grown rapidly alongside India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, the real-time payments network launched by the government in 2016. The platform now has more than 650 million registered users.
In January alone, PhonePe processed nearly 10 billion transactions, accounting for almost half of the 21.7 billion UPI payments made that month, according to regulatory data cited by Reuters.
Despite strong usage growth, PhonePe is still struggling to convert its massive user base into profits.
According to its IPO filing, the company’s losses widened to 14.44 billion rupees ($158 million) in the six months ending September 30. This compares with 12.03 billion rupees in losses during the same period the previous year.
Revenue, however, increased by about 22% to 39.18 billion rupees, indicating continued business expansion. Some investors remain cautious about the company’s ability to generate significant profits from its large user base. Portfolio managers who met PhonePe executives during pre-IPO discussions told Reuters that while India’s fintech market remains attractive, monetisation remains uncertain.
“Monetisation remains a question mark. Active users aren’t growing at the same pace, so the game is all about upsell, and that remains to be seen,” one portfolio manager told Reuters.
If completed, the listing would become India’s second-largest fintech IPO, behind Paytm’s $20 billion listing in 2021. Paytm’s market value has since dropped significantly and currently stands at around $7.1 billion, highlighting the challenges fintech firms face after going public.
