Walmart Inc., a global retail giant, is planning to demerge PhonePe from Flipkart, after its high profile acquisition of the latter. This demerger will coincide with PhonePe’s fund-raising program of about a billion dollars. Walmart, however, aims to unlock the value of its acquisition independently. Following the demerger, Walmart will have about 82% stake in both PhonePe and Flipkart. To survive as a separate entity, PhonePe is diversifying its offline offerings based on the requirements of the merchant. Once the demerger is successful, PhonePe will face fierce competition from Alphabet Inc’s Google Pay, Facebook Inc’s upcoming WhatsApp Pay, and other big players like Amazon Pay. This demerger will enable select Flipkart investors to cash out through secondary sale. After the demerger takes place, it is predicted that the combined value (earlier, $22 billion for Flipkart when acquired) of the individual companies will be varying from $27 to $30 billion. With the world’s top retail and tech giants jostling to grab a larger slice of the multi-billion-dollar market, is India’s digital payments space rapidly evolving into a new corporate hunting ground?
