Flipkart-owned PhonePe receives Rs 585.6 crore infusion from parent firm

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Flipkart-owned digital payments company PhonePe has received a fund infusion of about Rs 585.66 crore from its parent firm in another round, according to regulatory filings. PhonePe Pvt Ltd, Singapore, (formerly Flipkart Payments Pvt Ltd) was allotted 13,81,278 shares and the total amount paid was Rs 585,66,18,720, according to documents sourced by business intelligence platform Tofler The company declined to comment on the fund infusion.

In July this year, PhonePe had received a fund infusion of about Rs 698 crore from its parent firm.

The latest fund infusion is expected to provide PhonePe more muscle to compete in the burgeoning payments segment in India. It competes against the likes of Paytm, Google Pay, Amazon Pay and others in this space.

Paytm had recently announced a USD 1 billion (around Rs 7,173 crore) fund raise led by the US-based asset management firm T Rowe Price. Existing investors Alibaba, Softbank and Discovery Capital had also participated in the funding round.

Digital payments have seen significant growth in India after the government's demonetisation drive in 2016. Players like PhonePe and Paytm have witnessed strong growth in user base as well as transaction value and volumes.

PhonePe has seen its losses mount to Rs 1,904.72 crore in 2018-19 from a loss of Rs 791.03 crore for the year ended March 2018.

However, its revenue from operations rose manifold to Rs 184.22 crore in 2018-19 as against Rs 42.79 crore a year ago.

Previously, PhonePe had stated that it had seen 380 million transactions on its platform in August 2019, as compared to 290 million in the month of June.

There have also been reports that Flipkart is looking at hiving off PhonePe into a separate entity, a move that would help the payments company raise funds independently.