Walmart-backed PhonePe shelves IPO as global tensions rattle markets

PhonePe, India’s biggest integer payments platform, has enactment its IPO plans connected hold, citing geopolitical tensions and a volatile banal market.

On Monday, the Bengaluru-based institution said it had paused its IPO plans, but remains committed to going nationalist erstwhile marketplace conditions improve. The determination comes little than 2 months aft the fintech filed an updated IPO prospectus, targeting a listing connected Indian banal exchanges aboriginal this year.

Escalating tensions successful the Middle East person rattled planetary fiscal markets and pushed lipid prices higher, prompting investors to retreat from banal markets. India’s benchmark equity indexes, the Nifty 50 and BSE Sensex, person each fallen astir 9% implicit the past month, and hundreds of Indian stocks person recorded double-digit declines since the struggle started connected February 28.

PhonePe, valued astatine astir $12 billion successful January 2023, was targeting a marketplace capitalization of astir $15 cardinal successful its IPO, which could person raised arsenic overmuch arsenic $1.5 billion.

More recently, however, concern bankers moving with PhonePe connected its IPO had suggested lowering its valuation expectations to astir $9 billion, 2 radical acquainted with the institution told TechCrunch.

PhonePe said immoderate claims that the IPO is being paused owed to valuation concerns are “baseless.”

“We paused the process lone due to the fact that of the existent marketplace conditions, which are unrelated to PhonePe,” a institution spokesperson said successful an emailed statement.

PhonePe’s IPO was expected to supply an exit for respective aboriginal investors. According to its IPO filing, Tiger Global and Microsoft were acceptable to merchantability their full stakes, and bulk proprietor Walmart planned to offload up to 45.9 cardinal shares, oregon astir 9% of the company, portion retaining control.

Founded successful 2015 by Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer, PhonePe was acquired by e-commerce elephantine Flipkart a twelvemonth later, and has since grown into India’s largest integer payments platform. The institution leads the Indian government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem successful transaction volumes, up of Google Pay.

In February 2026, PhonePe processed astir 9.3 cardinal transactions worthy astir ₹13.1 trillion (about $141.9 billion), compared with Google Pay’s 6.8 cardinal transactions worthy astir ₹9 trillion (around $97.8 billion), according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Flipkart spun PhonePe retired into a abstracted company successful 2022, though Walmart remained the fintech’s biggest shareholder. The institution began arsenic a integer payments level but has since expanded into fiscal services, offering stockbroking and communal money investments, arsenic good arsenic an Android app store that’s positioned arsenic an alternate to Google’s Play Store.

In the six months ended September 2025, PhonePe’s gross from operations roseate 22% to ₹39.19 cardinal (about $424.4 million) from a twelvemonth earlier, according to its prospectus. The company’s nonaccomplishment widened to ₹14.44 cardinal (around $156.4 million) from ₹12.03 cardinal (about $130.4 million) a twelvemonth earlier, arsenic it continued to walk connected expanding its services.