By Siddharth Cavale
BENTONVILLE, Arkansas (Reuters) – The initial public offerings of Walmart's (NYSE ) marketplace Flipkart and digital payments platform PhonePe could be a couple of years away, a Walmart executive said.
“This is something we're looking at over the next few years,” Walmart executive vice president of corporate affairs Dan Bartlett said on the sidelines of the company's shareholder meeting near its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, late Thursday. .
Walmart could put a PhonePe IPO ahead of Flipkart, although Flipkart is a more mature business, Bartlett told Reuters.
Based in India, PhonePe is “one of the largest payment platforms” in the country, he said. He cited PhonePe's tie-up with India's instant money transfer system, Unified Payments. Interface (NASDAQ:) (UPI), which allows users to transfer money between multiple banks without revealing account details.
“There are a lot of processes that need to be put in place before we go public,” Bartlett said, referring to PhonePe. “Obviously, the question of the Indian stock market versus others” is “under consideration” for the future IPO, she added.
Walmart's Flipkart marketplace and PhonePe payments operations in India could be $100 billion businesses, fueled by strong growth, the retailer's chief financial officer said a year ago at an investor conference.
Executives at the time cited the two companies as key drivers that could help Walmart meet its goal of doubling the gross merchandise volume it sells in foreign markets to $200 billion within five years.
PhonePe said in October 2023 that its consolidated revenue for fiscal 2023 increased 77% as more customers used its platform to send and receive money in India's booming digital payments market.
With over 490 million registered users, PhonePe had a share of close to 51% of transaction value in India's UPI as of March 2023.
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