Walmart-Backed PhonePe Gets SEBI Approval For IPO

Walmart-backed Indian payments firm PhonePe has received regulatory approval for its stock market listing from the market regulator after confidentially filing for an initial public offering in September, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

Walmart, Microsoft and Tiger Global are expected to offload part of their shareholding as part of the public offering, according to the sources. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak to the media.

PhonePe’s IPO plan comes against the backdrop of buoyant Indian primary markets, with fundraising reaching a record high in 2025.

PhonePe, founded in 2015, is the top payments platform on India’s popular unified payments interface (UPI), with over 45% market share by volume as of December 2025. It processed 9.8 billion of the 21.6 billion transactions on UPI in August, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India.

It has more than 600 million registered users and offers payments solutions for nearly 50 million merchants.

In a regulatory filing ahead of the IPO, PhonePe disclosed that its losses narrowed in the year ended March 2025 to 17.2 billion rupees.

The company reported a loss of 19.96 billion rupees in the year ended March 2024.