NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Walmart Inc-controlled Indian e-commerce firm Flipkart said on Thursday it was partially spinning off PhonePe in a move aimed at widening the digital payments platform’s access to capital to fuel its growth.
PhonePe, which competes with Alibaba-backed homegrown payments pioneer Paytm and GooglePay, will raise $700 million in primary capital, Bengaluru-based Flipkart said in a statement.
The funds will be raised at a post-money valuation of $5.5 billion from existing Flipkart investors led by Walmart, the statement said.
Flipkart will continue to be PhonePe’s majority shareholder, it added.
PhonePe has more than 100 million monthly active users which helped it clock nearly one billion digital payment transactions in October.
(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Kim Coghill)
