India’s UPI payments giant PhonePe gets SEBI nod for IPO, eyes $15 billion valuation

India's UPI payments giant PhonePe has reportedly received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to proceed with its initial public offering (IPO), according to media reports.

The Bengaluru-based company had pre-filed its DRHP through the confidential route in September last year. With SEBI approval now in place, PhonePe is expected to move closer to launching the issue, although the final timing will depend on secondary market conditions, which remain volatile.

PhonePe is reported to be targeting a fundraise of up to Rs 12,000 crore, or around $1.32 billion, though the final size could change closer to the listing. The public issue is expected to be structured largely as an offer for sale (OFS), with existing shareholders, including Walmart, Tiger Global and Microsoft, offering a portion of their holdings.

The IPO could value the company at around $15 billion.

The proposed listing comes after a series of funding transactions over the past two years. PhonePe last raised $600 million through a secondary transaction led by General Atlantic in late 2025, valuing the company at $14.5 billion. Its most recent primary capital raise was a $100 million round in May 2023, also led by General Atlantic, at a valuation of $12 billion.

Founded in December 2015, PhonePe has grown into India’s largest digital payments platform over the past decade. The company has more than 43.5 crore registered users. On the merchant side, it has onboarded over 4 crore offline merchants across Tier 2, Tier 3 and smaller towns, with coverage extending to 99% of India’s pin codes.

PhonePe has built a dominant position in the Bharat Bill Payment System, where it processes over 45% of all transactions on the BBPS network. In December 2025 alone, the platform processed 9.8 billion customer-initiated transactions, according to data released by NPCI.

Beyond payments, PhonePe has steadily expanded into financial services since 2017. The company offers mutual funds and insurance products, positioning itself as a broader financial services marketplace as competition in core UPI payments intensifies. It has also reworked some of its adjacent bets. Its local commerce offering, Pincode, launched on ONDC in April 2023, has been pivoted from a consumer-facing model to a B2B, merchant-focused approach.

Financially, PhonePe has shown signs of operating leverage. In FY25, the company reported operating revenue of Rs 7,115 crore, a year-on-year increase of about 40% from Rs 5,064 crore in FY24. Net loss narrowed by 13.4% to Rs 1,727 crore from Rs 1,996 crore in the previous year. On an adjusted basis, excluding ESOP costs, profit rose sharply to Rs 630 crore, compared with Rs 117 crore a year earlier.