PhonePe files IPO papers: Walmart to cut 9% stake; Microsoft, Tiger Global seek exit

PhonePe

• PhonePe files updated Draft Red Herring Prospectus with SEBI for IPO
• IPO comprises of entirely an offer-for-sale of 5.06 crore equity shares by existing shareholders
• Promoter WM Digital Commerce Holdings to offload over 9% stake via OFS

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Bengaluru-based digital payments platform PhonePe, which is backed by Walmart, and General Atlantic, has filed an updated Draft Red Herring Prospectus (UDRHP) with capital markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to raise funds via IPO.

The IPO comprises of entirely an offer-for-sale of 5.06 crore equity shares by existing shareholders including promoter WM Digital Commerce Holdings, with no fresh issue component, as per the UDRHP filed on January 21. Hence, the entire offer proceeds will be received by selling shareholders.

Promoter WM Digital Commerce Holdings, owned by Wal-Mart International Holdings Inc, holds 71.77 percent stake in PhonePe. It is selling 4.59 crore shares via offer-for-sale (OFS), which is 9.06 percent of total paid-up equity.

The remainder 47.17 lakh shares in OFS will be sold by investors Tiger Global PIP 9-1, and Microsoft Global Finance Unlimited Company, an Irish subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. Both will exit the company via OFS.

General Atlantic Singapore PPIL is the largest public shareholder in the company with 8.98 percent stake, followed by Headstand (5.73 percent stake).

Moneycontrol exclusively reported earlier that UPI payments market leader PhonePe is looking to raise Rs 12,000 crore ($1.35 billion) via OFS at a valuation of around $15 billion.

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The SEBI has cleared PhonePe's confidential DRHP on January 20, which paved the way for filing UDRHP followed by RHP filing with Registrar of Companies for launching IPO. The confidential DRHP was filed in September 2025.

After the launch of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in April 2016, PhonePe was the India’s first private non-bank player to launch a UPI-based application in August 2016. It claimed the largest digital payments platform in terms of the number of transactions and total payments value (TPV) for customer-initiated UPI transactions in India, as per NPCI data.

On the financial front, PhonePe, which competes with only listed peer One 97 Communications (the parent of digital payments and financial services platform Paytm), has posted loss of Rs 1,444.4 crore for six months period ended September 2025, widening from loss of Rs 1,203.2 crore in same period last fiscal. Revenue from operations during the same period soared 22.2 percent to Rs 3,918.5 crore, up from Rs 3,207.5 crore.

The loss in the fiscal year ended March 2025 was Rs 1,727.4 crore, narrowing from loss of Rs 1,996.1 crore in previous year. Revenue for FY25 surged 40.5 percent to Rs 7,114.8 crore, up from Rs 5,064.1 crore in FY24.

The merchant bankers managing the PhonePe IPO are Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, JP Morgan India, Citigroup Global Markets India, Morgan Stanley India Company, Axis Capital, Goldman Sachs (India) Securities, Jefferies India, and JM Financial.