PhonePe Kickstarts IPO Process After Strong FY24 Growth

Fintech major PhonePe on February 20 announced that it has started preparations for the initial public offering (IPO) and become the latest tech unicorn to join the start-up IPO list. The Walmart-owned digital payments platform redomiciled from Singapore to India in December 2022.

The new-age company, in an official statement, said its top-line and bottom-line growth in FY24 across diverse business portfolios made it possible to prepare for a public listing on the Indian stock exchanges.

The fintech’s valuation stood at $12 billion till its last fundraising round conducted in 2023. As per reports, PhonePe had around 53 crore registered users and 20 crore monthly active customers as of March 2024. Additionally, PhonePe also reported processing over 770 crore transactions per month with a total value of Rs 10.5 lakh crore.

Read More | PhonePe Narrows its FY24 loss to Rs 1,996 Crore Even as ESOP Costs Rise

PhonePe’s Direct Integration Move

Last year, the fintech has also discontinued all third-party partnerships with payment aggregators, including SoftBank-backed orchestration platform Juspay. PhonePe informed its merchants that all its payment solutions will now be offered via direct integrations.

With this, the fintech firm now offers a direct integrated payment flow to the merchants --- from transaction origination to final settlement.

Read More | PhonePe's Direct Integration Move for Payments: Can It Impact Third-Party Providers' Biz like Juspay?

PhonePe’s FY24 Financials

PhonePe narrowed its FY24 loss to Rs 1,996 crore from Rs 2,795 crore in FY23, even as its share based payment expenses rose during the period. During the same year, the company witnessed around 74% increase in revenue to Rs 5,064 crore, as compared to Rs 2,914 crore in the previous year.

Not counting its employee stock option (ESOP) expenses, the company logged an 'Adjusted profit after tax' of Rs 197 crore for the first time, its annual report showed.

Its ESOP cost has been growing quite fast - Rs 843 crore in FY21, Rs 1186 crore in FY22, Rs 2057 crore in FY23 and Rs 2193 crore in FY24. ESOP cost went up due to a series of one-off factors like the company's redomicile to India and the rise of its valuation from $5.5 billion and to $12 billion in the latest round of funding.