Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal may invest as much as $100-150 million in PhonePe, as part of an ongoing financing round, report the Economic Times (ET) citing multiple people in the know of the development.
A person familiar with the matter told ET, “The amount that he (Binny Bansal) is investing is yet to be finalised. The talks have been on and are likely to close soon.”
If the deal goes ahead, the investment will rank among the largest one-off investments in a new-age business, the report said.
General Atlantic, Tiger Global, Ribbit Capital, among other have already invested over $450 million in PhonePe. Walmart is still the biggest investor in PhonePe, with a stake of around 70 per cent in the business.
In the Indian digital payments market, PhonePe has a strong position. The app makes use of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). Google Pay, Paytm, Amazon Pay, and WhatsApp Pay, among others are PhonePe’s competitors in the Indian market. However, the company claimed to have a 50.2 per cent market share in the UPI payment space in India.
According to the President and CEO of Walmart, Judith McKenna, the platform registers around four billion transactions monthly.
According to the ET report, Bansal played a key role in Flipkart’s acquiring ownership of PhonePe in 2016. He continues to be on the board of PhonePe and maintains close associations with the company’s co-founders, Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari.
Bansal – who co-founded Flipkart along with his friend Sachin Bansal in 2007 – is an angel investor in multiple startups, including BrightCHAMPS, Virgio, Flash, Hire Quotient, and Glints. He also helped back about 47 companies. The businessman-turned-investor has placed his investments through different entities, including Three State Capital, 021 Capital, and xto10x Technologies, which he co-founded with former Flipkart senior executive Saikiran Krishnamurthy.