Walmart-owned Flipkart and PhonePe have announced the full ownership separation of PhonePe, a digital payments platform. This completes the move to make PhonePe a fully India-domiciled company, a process that started earlier this year.
As part of this transaction, existing Flipkart Singapore and PhonePe Singapore shareholders, led by Walmart, have purchased shares directly in PhonePe India.
“Establishing these businesses as individual entities will allow both to chart their own growth paths, as they continue building industry-leading offerings that provide access and inclusion for Indians,” the company said in a statement.
Started in 2007, the Flipkart Group today has a footprint in several industries including e-commerce marketplace Flipkart.com, Myntra, Cleartrip, Flipkart Health+, and more.
The PhonePe Group was acquired by the Flipkart Group in 2016. The digital payments company has over 400 million registered users and has digitized more than 35 million offline merchants spread across tier-2, -3, -4 cities, and beyond.
Commenting on the development, Sameer Nigam, Founder and CEO, PhonePe said, “Flipkart and PhonePe are proud, homegrown Indian brands with a user base upwards of 400 million each. We are looking forward to the next phase of our growth as we invest in new businesses like insurance, wealth management and lending, while also enabling the next wave of growth for UPI payments in India. This will help propel our vision to provide billions of Indians with financial inclusion.”
Impacting businesses
Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO of Flipkart Group said, “The Flipkart Group has developed many successful entrepreneurs and seen impactful businesses started by former employees. We are proud to see PhonePe grow and thrive as a successful organisation in its own right.”
Krishnamurthy added, “We are confident PhonePe will continue to scale and achieve its vision of providing financial inclusion to millions of Indians. Flipkart stays committed to its purpose to empower every Indian’s dream by delivering value through innovation in technology and commerce while helping small businesses connect to pan-India markets.”
Walmart will remain the majority shareholder of both business groups.
