Flipkart, PhonePe IPO could take a few years, says Walmart executive
Walmart’s Flipkart marketplace and digital payments platform PhonePe could take a few years to go public, a Walmart executive said.
“This is something we’ll be looking at over the next few years,” Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, said Thursday night at the company’s shareholders meeting near its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Walmart may prioritize PhonePe’s IPO over Flipkart, even though Flipkart is a more mature company, Bartlett told Reuters.
India-based PhonePe is “one of the largest payments platforms” in the country, he said. He cited PhonePe’s tie-up with India’s instant money transfer system, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which allows users to transfer money to multiple banks without having to disclose account details.
“There are a lot of processes that need to be done before we go public,” Bartlett said, referring to PhonePe. “Of course, the question of Indian exchange versus others” is “being considered” for the future IPO listing, he added.
Walmart’s Flipkart marketplace and PhonePe payments businesses in India could generate $100 billion (about Rs 8.352 billion) in revenue, buoyed by strong growth, the retailer’s chief financial officer said at an investor conference a year ago.
Executives at the time cited the two companies as key factors that could help Walmart achieve its goal of doubling its gross sales volume in overseas markets to $200 billion (approximately Rs 16,70,300 crore) in five years.
PhonePe in October 2023 reported that its consolidated revenue for FY 2023 rose 77 percent as more customers used the platform to send and receive money in India’s booming digital payments market.
With over 490 million registered users, PhonePe had nearly 51 percent share of the transaction value on India’s UPI as of March 2023.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
