Tiger Global, Microsoft to exit Walmart-backed PhonePe via IPO


Tiger Global and Microsoft are poised to exit PhonePe, the Walmart-backed Indian payments startup that has renewed its IPO filing, offering investors and market watchers a rare look at how global investors are cashing in on the venture boom through India’s public markets.

On Wednesday, PhonePe updated IPO prospectus (PDF), detailing the number of shares sold. Tiger Global and Microsoft offered their full shares in the company, while Walmart chose to retain a majority stake, selling up to 45.9 million shares (about 9% of the company).

Up to 50.66 million shares were sold, signaling a liquidity event for existing shareholders.

PhonePe is there worth about $12 billion in the January 2023 funding round, although the target market capitalization is about $15 billion in the IPO, which could raise up to $1.5 billion, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

The offer does not include any founders sell-down, and the prospectus shows that the sale is being led by existing investors rather than by PhonePe’s management.

Founded in 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer and acquired by e-commerce giant Flipkart a year later, PhonePe has become one of India’s most successful fintechs. The company started with digital payments and has expanded into stockbroking, mutual fund investments, and even offers The Android app store is an alternative to the Google Play Store.

PhonePe is the largest player in India’s digital payments market, leading the UPI ecosystem in transaction volume and staying ahead of Google Pay. By December 2025, it processed about 9.81 billion transactions worth about ₹13.6 trillion (about $148.6 billion), compared to Google Pay’s 7.50 billion transactions worth about ₹9.6 trillion (about $104.5 billion), according to the latest NPCI. data.

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The company was spun after Flipkart decided a partial split in December 2020. PhonePe and Flipkart completely separated in December 2022, and Walmart remains the fintech’s dominant shareholder.

In the six months ending September 2025, PhonePe’s revenue from operations rose 22% to ₹39.19 billion (about $427.79 million) from a year earlier, while its loss widened to ₹14.44 billion (about $157.70 million) from ₹12.03 billion (about 4 million US dollars).



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