When the Big Players Walk Away
Tiger Global and Microsoft are heading for the exits. PhonePe, the Walmart-backed Indian payments startup, just updated its IPO filing and the details are fascinating. Both firms are dumping their entire stakes while Walmart holds tight to its majority position, offloading only about 9% of its shares.
This isn’t just another IPO story. It’s a window into how the venture capital game actually ends when the music stops playing. We spent years hearing about massive funding rounds and sky-high valuations, but the exit strategy? That’s where things get real.
PhonePe was last valued at around $12 billion back in January 2023. Now they’re shooting for $15 billion in this public offering, which could bring in up to $1.5 billion. Not bad for a company that started in 2015 and got scooped up by Flipkart just a year later.
The Numbers Tell Their Own Story
Here’s what makes PhonePe interesting beyond the investor exits. They’re actually dominating India’s digital payments landscape, processing about 9.81 billion transactions in December 2025 alone. That’s roughly $148.6 billion worth of payments. Google Pay, their closest competitor, handled 7.50 billion transactions in the same period.
But dominance doesn’t equal profitability yet. In the six months ending September 2025, PhonePe’s revenue jumped 22% to about $427.79 million. Sounds great until you notice their losses widened to $157.70 million from $131.34 million the year before. They’re growing fast but burning cash faster.
The company has been smart about diversification though. They started with payments but branched into stockbroking, mutual funds, and even built an Android app store to compete with Google Play. It’s a Technology play that makes sense when you’ve already got hundreds of millions of users on your platform.
What’s telling here is that founders aren’t selling any shares. Sameer Nigam, Rahul Chari, and Burzin Engineer are staying put. When the guys who built the thing aren’t cashing out but the VCs are running for the door, that says something about different timelines and different definitions of success.
Key Takeaway: Tiger Global and Microsoft are fully exiting PhonePe through its IPO while Walmart retains majority control. The fintech giant leads India’s digital payments market but continues to post widening losses despite 22% revenue growth, raising questions about whether market dominance in emerging fintech spaces can translate to actual profits before investor patience runs dry.