PhonePe confidentially filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India in late September 2025, initiating the formal regulatory process for what is shaping up to be one of the largest listings in India's fintech history. The Walmart-backed unified payments interface platform is targeting a $1.5 billion initial public offering that would value the company at approximately $15 billion, a figure that reflects both the scale of its user base and the rapid improvement in its financial performance over the past financial year. The confidential filing route allows the company to engage with SEBI's review process without making the full prospectus publicly available at this stage.
The filing came on the back of a strong set of financials for the year ended March 2025, in which PhonePe's operating revenue surged 40% to Rs 7,115 crore. The headline growth rate underscores the platform's continued ability to convert its dominant position in India's UPI payments ecosystem into growing commercial revenues, as it progressively monetises a user base that transacts billions of times each month across peer-to-peer transfers, merchant payments, and financial services products.
LOSSES NARROW AS ADJUSTED PROFIT CLIMBS
PhonePe's net loss narrowed by 13.4% to Rs 1,727 crore in FY2025, reflecting a clear trajectory towards sustainable profitability even as the company continues to invest in its technology infrastructure and distribution. On an adjusted basis — excluding employee stock option costs — the platform recorded a profit of Rs 630 crore, nearly five times the adjusted profit delivered in the prior year. That trajectory is likely to feature prominently in the company's investor communications as it seeks to build a compelling case for the listing.
The distinction between reported and adjusted profitability matters for prospective investors evaluating the IPO. ESOP expenses represent a genuine cost of retaining and incentivising talent in a competitive market, but they are non-cash in nature and do not directly reflect the operating economics of the payments business. The adjusted figures provide a cleaner view of how the platform performs on a unit-economics basis, an important data point for institutional investors who will be conducting their own analysis of the company's path to reported profitability and sustainable free cash flow generation.
CONFIDENTIAL ROUTE PRESERVES FLEXIBILITY
The use of the confidential filing route is a strategic choice that gives PhonePe the ability to manage the timing and nature of its public disclosure. The company can receive SEBI's comments and complete its regulatory dialogue before committing to a public filing date, preserving flexibility to adjust the transaction structure, size, or valuation range in response to regulatory feedback or shifts in market conditions. This approach has become an accepted and increasingly common path for large, high-profile companies that want to control their pre-IPO information environment carefully.
A successful listing at the targeted valuation would mark a defining moment for India's digital payments sector and for Walmart, which retained PhonePe as a standalone entity following the restructuring of its Flipkart portfolio. The IPO would provide a liquid exit mechanism for early investors and a public valuation benchmark for a company that has grown to be one of the most significant financial services platforms on the subcontinent. It could also catalyse further capital markets activity among the cohort of large Indian fintech companies that have been evaluating public listings as a path to liquidity and long-term capital.