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Walmart-owned PhonePe has distributed 20 Lakh SmartSpeakers that helps merchants validate payments through audio confirmations.
The company has achieved this distribution within six months of launching SmartSpeakers. On an average, PhonePe SmartSpeakers are being used for more than 75 crore transactions per month across ~16,000 pin codes in the country. Interestingly, Tier 3 cities account for the deployment of more than 5 lakh SmartSpeakers.
PhonePe’s latest innovation provides payment notifications in 11 Indian languages, comes with up to 4 days of battery life, data connectivity, a battery level LED indicator, audio alerts for low battery level and a replay button for the last transaction.
Fall out from Flipkart
Earlier this week, PhonePe’s parent Walmart reported a 72 per cent drop in operating income (constant currency terms) for Q4FY23 as compared to the same period in FY22. This was attributed to the costs incurred by Walmart towards separation of Flipkart and PhonePe ownership.
Overall, Walmart reported a revenue of $164.0 billion in Q4FY23, up 7.9 per cent in constant currency. In the earnings call, Walmart CFO John David Rainey noted that a lot of “Walmart’s revenue growth is coming from Flipkart, in particular.” PhonePe has recently been spun off from Flipkart as a separate business owned by Walmart. The fintech company also changed its domicile from Singapore to India. These developments were followed by PhonePe raising a new funding round from General Atlantic at a valuation of $12 billion.
Jump in valuation
Addressing the jump in PhonePe valuation to $12 billion, Rainey said that this valuation was was supported by fintech company’s annualised TPV reaching more than $950 billion (about 50 per cent higher than just one year ago) and the platform also exceeding more than 4 billion monthly transactions.
During Walmart’s Q4 earnings call, Rainey also noted that the global retail giant is particularly pleased to see Flipkart’s positive contribution margin expanding. The US-based company holds a majority stake in Indian e-commerce major Flipkart and fintech platform PhonePe.
“Any e-commerce or any digital platform, needs an infrastructure that you can scale at a low marginal cost. And that’s what Flipkart has done. They’ve invested in that infrastructure over the last three years, so now we are able to see the contribution profit expanding. So, we’re excited about that,” Rainey added.
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