Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs, said that possible IPOs for Walmart’s Flipkart and PhonePe are “something we’re looking at over the next couple of years,” Reuters reported.
Although Flipkart has been operating longer than PhonePe, the latter’s IPO might take precedence, the exec added. PhonePe’s status as a major digital payment provider in India and its association with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) – the country’s instant money transfer system – could contribute to this preference.
In October last year, PhonePe said its total revenue increased 77% in the 2023 fiscal year. The company, which has more than 490 million users, said it accounted for about 51% of India’s UPI transaction value as of March 2023.
In the same year, PhonePe also secured US$450 million from investors like Tiger Global, General Atlantic, and Ribbit Capital at a pre-money valuation of US$12 billion. This came after the fintech unicorn’s separation from Flipkart in December 2022.
Meanwhile, Flipkart is also raising additional funding in a round led by Walmart itself and joined by Google.
Bartlett indicated multiple procedures are necessary before IPOs, including choosing to list on Indian or international exchanges, all of which are being evaluated.
Last year, Walmart CFO John David Rainey said that Flipkart and PhonePe could evolve into US$100 billion entities. These two were marked as crucial in Walmart’s goal to double its overseas gross merchandise volume to US$200 billion in five years.
