A Walmart executive has stated that the IPOs for Flipkart and PhonePe may take a couple of years.
Walmart’s Flipkart marketplace and PhonePe payment operations in India could each become $100 billion (roughly Rs. 8,35,200 crore) businesses.
Initial public offerings for Walmart’s Flipkart marketplace and PhonePe digital payments platform may still be a few years away, according to a Walmart executive.
“We’re considering this over the next couple of years,” stated Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs, during the company’s shareholder meeting near its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, on Thursday evening.
Bartlett informed Reuters that Walmart might prioritize an IPO for PhonePe before Flipkart, despite Flipkart being a more established business.
Based in India, PhonePe is “one of the largest payment platforms” in the country, according to Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs. He highlighted PhonePe’s integration with India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which allows users to transfer money across multiple banks without sharing account details.
“There are many processes that need to be established before we go public,” Bartlett said regarding PhonePe. He also mentioned that the choice between listing on the Indian exchange or others is still “under consideration” for the future IPO.
Walmart’s Flipkart marketplace and PhonePe payments operations in India have the potential to become $100 billion (roughly Rs. 8,35,200 crore) businesses, driven by robust growth, as noted by Walmart’s chief financial officer at an investor conference a year ago.
Executives at the time identified the two businesses as crucial factors that could enable Walmart to achieve its goal of doubling the gross merchandise volume in international markets to $200 billion (roughly Rs. 16,70,300 crore) within five years.
In October 2023, PhonePe reported a 77 percent increase in consolidated revenue for the financial year 2023, driven by the growing number of customers using its platform for money transfers in India’s rapidly expanding digital payments market.
As of March 2023, PhonePe had over 490 million registered users and held nearly 51 percent of the transaction value share on India’s UPI.
