General Atlantic Pumps $600 Million Into PhonePe To Double Stake

Growth equity firm General Atlantic (GA) has infused $600 million (about Rs 5,323 crore) in fintech major PhonePe through secondary transactions, more than doubling its stake to 9%, people aware of the matter said.

The secondary funding was done to help PhonePe employees exercise their stock options and meet their tax obligations. The infusion increases GA’s stake in the Walmart-owned firm to 9%, from 4.4% earlier.

No liquidity was given to any employees or the company founders, people cited above said.

E-mail queries sent to PhonePe elicited no response.

US-based General Atlantic has been a long-term investor in PhonePe, having first invested $350 million in January 2023 at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion. GA and its co-investors pumped in an additional $200 million in PhonePe in May 2023.

With the latest $600 million infusion, GA’s total investment in PhonePe adds to $1.15 billion.

PhonePe’s majority ownership rests with US retail major Walmart, which holds about 75% stake. General Atlantic now owns 9%, while the remaining 15% is allocated to employee stock options. Meanwhile, PhonePe has recently filed draft papers with markets regulator Sebi for its upcoming initial public offering (IPO) using the confidential pre-filing route.

Data from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for September 2025 shows that PhonePe leads the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) ecosystem with about 8,961.78 million transactions valued at over Rs 12 lakh crore. Google Pay ranked second, recording around 6,832.93 million transactions worth close to Rs 8.7 lakh crore, followed by Paytm with roughly 1,394.07 million transactions amounting to Rs 1.4 lakh crore.

On the financial front, the fintech firm narrowed its consolidated losses to Rs 1,727.4 crore in FY25, down from Rs 1,996.1 crore in the preceding fiscal. Its revenue from operations rose 40.5% from Rs 5,064 crore in FY24 to Rs 7,115 crore in FY25, according to data accessed from Tofler.