Company Overview
- PhonePe is a mobile payment app that allows users to transfer money instantly to anyone by just using their phone number.
- PhonePe was found in December 2015 and was acquired by Flipkart in 2016. In 2018, Flipkart was acquired by Walmart and PhonePe was also part of the transaction.
- Flushed with funds after a massive $700 million funding round led by Walmart, PhonePe has been very aggressive with its marketing and acquisition. PhonePe was valued at $5.5 billion, making it the second most valuable fintech after Paytm.
- In April, it processed 1.19 billion UPI transactions, worth Rs. 2.34 lakh crore, cornering nearly 45% of the market. And with this recent acquisition, it has hit another milestone in the business world.
Acquisition Overview
- Bengaluru-based India’s leading UPI payment platform, Phonepe is all set to acquire homegrown content and app discovery platform, Indus OS for a deal valued at $60 million.
- This is believed to be the second acquisition PhonePe has made. In 2018, PhonePe had acquired point-of-sale startup Zopper as well, as part of its aggressive expansion.
- The rationale behind this acquisition is to boost its ‘super app’, called Switch, designed to offer a wide range of services under one umbrella. The super app aggregates 400 apps across verticals including categories such as food, travel, shopping, and lifestyle which users can access.
- With this acquisition, PhonePe not only gets Indus OS’ customer base of English-speaking 100 million users, but also plans to expand it for users not having English as their primary language.
