India-based mobile payment service provider PhonePe, which is owned by e-commerce operator Flipkart, is reportedly in the process of raising $1bn from a group of investors featuring internet group Tencent, hedge fund manager Tiger Global Management and unnamed other investors. The company is reportedly seeking the fresh funding at a valuation within the $7bn to $8bn range.
Founded in 2015, PhonePe runs a mobile app that makes it possible for users to transfer money by using a phone number rather than a bank account number. In addition, the app is also delving into online lending, wealth management and insurance services. It boasts 50 million monthly active users and claims to have facilitated up to 290 million monthly transactions by then end of April 2019.
PhonePe was acquired by Flipkart as the end of 2015 and it was, at the time, its third major acquisition in the payment tech space, after it had bought its peers NGPay in 2014, and FX Mart Pvt in August 2015.
The India innovations scene has received much attention from corporate venturer, as our GCV Analytics data illustrated on the bar chart below suggest. While the number of deals went up significantly already in 2015 to 128 rounds, up from 72 in the previous year, the growth in dollars resulting from increasing valuations, became more manifest in 2017 and 2018, with 152 and 174 rounds, worth an estimated total of $8.71bn and $7.39bn, respectively. Notably, the number of investments in fintech enterprises went up in those two years, registering 35 in 2017 and 32 rounds in 2018. The overall upward trend in valuations appears to have been sustained through the first months of this year, as we have already reported 77 deals, worth an estimated total of $3.48bn by the end of May.
