Walmart To Trim Stake, Tiger Global And Microsoft To Exit Through PhonePe’s USD 1.5 Billion IPO

New Delhi, Jan 22: Walmart will trim its stake in PhonePe by about 12 per cent, while other backers such as Microsoft and Tiger Global will offload all their holdings in the digital payments company’s IPO, touted as India’s biggest since October.

Bengaluru-based PhonePe plans to sell 5.07 crore shares, entirely by existing shareholders, with no additional capital being raised, according to an updated draft prospectus filed with the market regulator.

The offering may raise up to USD 1.5 billion, valuing the company at about USD 15 billion. This will be the biggest initial public offering (IPO) since Tata Capital’s USD 1.7 billion share sale in October.

PhonePe, which competes with Google Pay and Paytm, aims to list by mid-2026.

Shareholding changes

Walmart, which holds 71.77 per cent in PhonePe through its entity WM Digital Commerce Holdings, plans to sell as many as 4.59 crore shares, representing about 9 per cent of the company.

Smaller shareholders Tiger Global and Microsoft are fully exiting their stakes, according to the updated draft red herring prospectus.

Tiger Global, which first invested in PhonePe in 2021 after Walmart carved out the payments business from Flipkart India as a separate entity, will sell 10.39 lakh shares. Microsoft Global Finance plans to offload 36.78 lakh shares.

Financials and scale

PhonePe had 65.76 crore registered users and processed transactions worth Rs 5,340 crore. It offers payment solutions to over 4.7 crore merchants. The company posted a loss of Rs 1,444 crore on revenue of Rs 3,919 crore in the six months ended September 30, 2025.

The total shares to be offloaded through the offer for sale (OFS) are valued at around Rs 10,115.87 crore, based on the weighted average cost of acquisition per equity share.

Kotak Mahindra Capital, Goldman Sachs, Axis Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Citi, JM Financial Services Ltd, Morgan Stanley and Jefferies Financial Group are among the book-running lead managers for the offering.

Previous fundraising and market position

The Walmart group firm last raised Rs 7,021 crore (around USD 850 million) at a pre-money valuation of USD 12 billion (about Rs 1 lakh crore) from investors such as General Atlantic, Walmart, Ribbit Capital, TVS Capital Funds and Tiger Global in the financial year 2022–23.

Founded in 2016, PhonePe has raised around Rs 18,000 crore to date.

PhonePe leads India’s digital payments market with over 45 per cent market share in UPI transactions.

In December 2025, the company processed 9.8 billion transactions, according to NPCI data.

The company posted revenue of Rs 7,115 crore for FY 2024–25, a 40 per cent year-on-year increase. It also turned free cash flow positive, with operating cash flow of Rs 1,202 crore. Its adjusted profit after tax (excluding ESOP costs) more than tripled to Rs 630 crore.

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PhonePe’s public listing is expected to set a benchmark for India’s digital payments sector and could pave the way for other fintech unicorns eyeing public markets.

(Disclaimer: Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)