PhonePe prepares for billion-dollar India fintech IPO
Numbes show Flipkart spinout is cutting losses but must grow financial services arm
Welcome back—we are a little delayed this week, but read on for a lot of interesting data ahead of a major India fintech listing.
That’s because PhonePe, India’s largest fintech business, is set for a mega IPO that could rake in $1.5 billion and value the company, which was spun out of leading e-commerce platform Flipkart in 2020, at $15 billion.
We’ve written a lot about India’s IPO window opening, and PhonePe is one of the major listings that’s been tipped to come for some time and it appears very close now after it received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to go public.
The company has spent years preparing to float. It redomiciled its business from Singapore to India back in 2022, with main backer and Flipkart-owner Walmart paying over $1 billion in taxes in the process. Last year, PhonePe filed its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the regulator, a necessary precursor to an IPO in India.
DRHP is a phrase you hear a lot, for those not familiar with it. PhonePe made its file public which gives us a treasure trove of data to look through.
What can we expect from an imminent PhonePe IPO?
The company and its filings will lift the lid on what building a modern day fintech business looks like in India.
PhonePe reported $427 million in revenue from April-September 2025 with 22% year-on-year growth
It claims to have 657 million registered users, with 47 million merchants served
PhonePe is the most dominant payment player using UPI based on total value of transactions, ahead of Google Pay
This UPI base gives it solid engagement and growth, which most businesses would kill for. The company’s challenge is to turn its consistent and strong flow of payments into higher-revenue services like credit, insurance, stocks and more.
Tiger Global and Microsoft are preparing to fully exit, offering their entire stakes, while majority owner Walmart plans to retain control and sell up to 45.9 million shares, or about 9% of the company. There’s likely to be a lot of demand from the retail segment as the news will cover in the coming weeks and months.
Finally, in case you missed it: the TikTok USA deal was finally announced, we wrote about it in detail on Friday so check that out if you didn’t yet. Spoiler: it looks great for ByteDance.
Have a great rest of the week,
Jon
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China considers national tech M&A fund
China announced a massive $7 billion investment programme in December to create a network of regional funds that will back early-stage startups, and now it looks like that may be complemented by a later-stage initiative.
Bloomberg reported that Beijing is exploring a national mergers and acquisitions fund to accelerate the country’s domestic push in areas like robotics and AI.
Details are fairly scant for now.
The fund will “strengthen the planning and guidance of government investment funds, promote innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity, and accelerate the cultivation and development of new productive forces,” according to comments from Wang Changlin, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission.
Given China’s appetite for tech stocks, the push for domestic self-sufficiency and the startup investment programme, the M&A fund feels like a logical thought process to keep the machine oiled.
Beijing was investigating Manus before $2.5B Meta acquisition
More from Beijing, which is said to be stepping up its scrutiny of Meta’s deal to acquire once-China-based AI startup Manus.
Interestingly, officials are said to have started looking into the company in December:
Chinese officials had begun looking into whether the December takeover of the agentic AI startup violated tech export or national security regulations. The central issue is whether Chinese technology or user data could have been compromised or shared with an American company. Regulators are now also investigating potential violations of rules governing cross-border currency flows, tax accounting and overseas investments, people familiar with the matter said.
It’s hard to see the deal being blocked, but maybe there’ll be some punitive measures.
China
Alibaba is reportedly laying the groundwork to list its chipmaking arm T-Head, capitalising on appetite for AI-related businesses link
The US Congress is moving closer to asserting oversight over AI chip exports to China, setting up a potential clash with the Donald Trump administration over plans to allow Nvidia to sell its H200 processors link
Chinese regulators have given China’s biggest tech firms the green light to prepare orders for Nvidia’s H200 AI chips link
Frontier research lab MiroMind, a unit of China-founded Shanda Group, is reportedly asking some Shanghai staff to relocate to Singapore link
ByteDance is pushing hard into China’s cloud market, using its AI capabilities to diversify beyond consumer apps—its Volcano Engine is now China’s second-largest AI infrastructure provider behind Alibaba with about 13% of AI cloud revenue in the first half of 2025 link
Baidu’s AI assistant, Ernie, crossed 200M monthly active users as it launched its newest version link
Zhipu is capping access to its coding assistant after heavy demand for a new AI model strained computing capacity link
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said Chinese AI firms have yet to push the technological frontier and remain roughly six months behind leading Western labs link
Kuaishou’s AI video generator Kling now has 12M monthly users with more than $20M in revenue per month link
Alibaba formed a power-generation joint venture with China National Nuclear Power link
Unitree Robotics shipped more than 5,500 full-body humanoid robots in 2025, outpacing US peers such as Tesla, Figure AI and Agility Robotics link
Humanoid robotics firm UBTech Robotics has agreed to supply robots to Airbus, marking a push to expand industrial use cases outside China link
Temu is now joint top seller of cross-border e-commerce alongside Amazon, growing from 1% to 24% in one year link
China has expanded its probe into PDD after clashes between company staff and regulators around alleged issues such as fraudulent deliveries and tax violations link
TikTok can continue operating its Canadian subsidiary for now after a judge paused an earlier wind-down order link
India
Everstone Capital is merging India’s Wingify with France’s AB Tasty to build a digital experience optimization company generating over $100M in annual revenue link
Emergent, an India-founded AI coding startup that helps enterprises build apps, raised $70M from Khosla Ventures and SoftBank at a valuation of $300M link
Unbox Robotics, a warehouse automation startup, raised $28M in a round led by ICICI Venture link
Voice AI startup Bolna raised a $6.3M round led by General Catalyst—the startup is making $25K a month selling voice agents to entrepreneurs link
Dubai-based restaurant reservation startup Eat App is doubling down on India after acquiring rival ReserveGo, raising $10M and partnering with Swiggy to upsell its restaurant product link
Payment firm Juspay raised $50M at a $1.2B valuation led by WestBridge Capital link
iPhone shipments in India jumped to about 14M units in 2025, lifting Apple’s market share to a record 9% even though the overall smartphone market stayed flat link
Apple asked an Indian court to block the antitrust watchdog from seeking its global financial records in an App Store probe link
The Tata Group is set to invest $11B to establish a world-class “Innovation City” near the new Navi Mumbai International Airport link
Deepinder Goyal is stepping down as CEO of Zomato and parent Eternal, he will hand the top job to Albinder Dhindsa, who leads quick commerce unit Blinkit, but remain on Eternal’s board link
Amagi Media Labs slid in its India market debut after raising $196M in an IPO as its valuation dropped to just over $800M link
India remains a paradox in the global app economy, leading the world in downloads but lagging on consumer spending, according to a new report from Sensor Tower link
Amazon Prime Video (65M) has more than three times the subscribers of Netflix (20M) in India, highlighting how bundling and low pricing are shaping the market—but market leader JioHotstar boasts over 300M subscribers link
Southeast Asia
Malaysia is weighing tighter rules for social media platforms after an outcry over sexualised images generated by Grok link
Grab’s planned acquisition of GoTo Group stalled over Telkomsel’s stake, with the state-linked carrier unwilling to sell at current valuations after investing at a much higher price link
Singapore-based DayOne Data Centers is targeting a valuation of up to $20B in a planned US IPO, a sharp jump from its $10B valuation from recent rounds that featured Coatue Management investing link
Indonesian courier firm J&T Global Express plans to raise $596M through a convertible bond issue via Hong Kong-based listing link
Singapore pledged to invest more than $786M over the next five years to fund public artificial intelligence research link
Meta’s top Asia-Pacific public policy executive, Simon Milner, is set to retire from full-time work in the first half of the year link
Thailand’s largest power producer, Gulf Development is moving into AI through a partnership with Google which will offer AI and cloud infrastructure, including sovereign AI capabilities designed to handle sensitive data link
Vietnam opened applications for licensed cryptocurrency trading platforms under a tightly controlled pilot framework link
Anthropic is lining up checks of at least $1B from Coatue, GIC and Iconiq Capital link
Singapore-based Level3AI raised $13M for its enterprise AI agents for voice, email and chat link
Crypto financial services startup Veera raised $10M across pre-seed and seed funding link
South Korea
Facial recognition payments are gaining traction in cashless South Korea as advances in AI and 3D imaging improve accuracy link
South Korea has enacted what it calls the world’s first comprehensive AI law link
AI chip designer FuriosaAI is seeking to raise $300M-$500M in a pre-IPO Series D funding round link
Prosecutors are investigating the disappearance of a “significant” amount of Bitcoin seized in a criminal case link
Greenoaks and Altimeter have filed arbitration claims against South Korea’s government, alleging unlawful treatment of e-commerce firm Coupang link
Japan
Google invested in Japanese startup Sakana AI, a startup founded by a former Googler, following Sakana’s $135M Series B last year that valued it at $2.6B link
Sony plans to spin off its TV hardware business into a new joint venture with China’s TCL, which it hopes will put pressure on Samsung link
Tokyo Stock Exchange is courting Asian startups to list, pitching itself as a cross-border IPO venue by offering fundraising and listing support link
But: Japan lacks a clear public-market proxy for the AI boom, with no local equivalent of Nvidia, which explains renewed investor interest in Kioxia, whose shares are up nearly 50% this year as demand for its once-commoditised NAND flash chips shifts from consumer electronics to higher-margin data centre and AI infrastructure customers link
Rest of Asia
Taiwan’s GlobalWafers is preparing a second-phase expansion of its Texas plant, with an additional $4B investment for the $3.5B facility link
Hong Kong will issue its first batch of stablecoin licenses in Q1, its finance chief said link
Wow, didn't expect to see 2025 revenue figures already! How do they projec that far out for the DRHP, or am I missing something about those numbers? So cool to see this deep dive.