PhonePe and Flipkart IPO may come in two years, Walmart executive says

Walmart plans to launch PhonePe and Flipkart's IPO in two years amid strong growth.

PhonePe and Flipkart IPOs (Initial public offerings) may come in two years, with PhonePe’s IPO likely coming before that of Flipkart, according to a Reuters report.

PhonePe has a market share of 51% in India's digital payments ecosystem (Bloomberg/For Representative Purposes Only)

"This is something we're looking at over the next couple of years,” Walmart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs, Dan Bartlett, told Reuters on the sidelines of the company's shareholder meeting near its Bentonville, Arkansas, headquarters, on Thursday. Walmart owns the majority controlling stakes in both PhonePe and Flipkart.

Walmart may put PhonePe’s IPO ahead of Flipkart, even though Flipkart is a more mature business, Bartlett told Reuters.

With more than 490 million registered users, PhonePe had a near 51% share of the value of transactions on India's UPI payments as of March 2023, according to the report.

"There's a lot of a processes that have to be put in place before we go public," Bartlett said, referring to PhonePe. “Obviously the question about the Indian exchange versus others" is "under consideration" for the future IPO listing, he added.

PhonePe said in October 2023 that its consolidated revenue for financial year 2022-23 surged 77%, as more customers used its platform to send and receive money in India's booming digital payments market, according to the report.

Walmart's Flipkart marketplace and PhonePe payments operations in India could be a $100 billion businesses due to strong growth, the retailer's CFO (Chief financial officer) said a year ago at an investor conference, the report read.

Executives at that time cited the two businesses as key drivers that could help Walmart meet its target of doubling sales in foreign markets to $200 billion in five years, according to the report.