UPI market leader PhonePe becomes a public company ahead of IPO

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Fintech firm PhonePe has transitioned from a private firm to a public company ahead of its planned initial public offer (IPO), the digital payments player has told the Registrar of Companies (RoC). This is a necessary legal step for companies looking to list on Indian stock markets.

The Walmart-owned digital payments platform said on February 20 that it was starting preparatory steps for a potential IPO. On February 25, Moneycontrol reported that PhonePe had picked Kotak Mahindra Capital, JP Morgan, Citi and Morgan Stanley as advisers for the IPO, seeking a valuation of up to $15 billion.

The company’s extraordinary general meeting on April 16 decided to change the name from "PhonePe Private Limited" to "PhonePe Limited", the document submitted to RoC said. Private company data platform The Kredible shared the document with Moneycontrol.

The change has to be approved by the Central Processing Centre, Ministry of Corporate Affairs by issuing a fresh certificate of incorporation, the company said.

PhonePe redomiciled from Singapore to India in December 2022. The company said it has established a clear corporate structure with each of its new non-payment businesses as fully owned subsidiaries.

"PhonePe's strong top-line and bottom-line growth across its diverse business portfolio, as detailed in its FY23-24 annual report, makes this a suitable time to prepare for a public listing", the company said at the time of the announcement.

The company was valued at around $12 billion in its last private fundraising.

The Bengaluru-based company is the country's largest digital payments player with close to 48 percent market share in Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the real-time mobile payments platform run by National Payments Corporation of India. Google Pay is the second largest player with around 37 percent of the market.

In FY24, the Bengaluru-based company reported a 73 percent year-on-year increase in revenue at Rs 5,064 crore. Its Profit After Tax (PAT) came in at Rs 197 crore against a loss of Rs 738 crore in the previous year.