Published: 12/4/2020
Good morning, it's Friday and we're wrapping up yet another week. Flipkart has partially spun off its stake in PhonePe and Fisdom has raised some more capital. A very fintechy day- in other news Stripe launched their Banking as a Service product that looks really cool.
➡️ Flipkart is finally partially spinning out PhonePe- the fintech with the most popular UPI app in India. The company is now being valued at $5.5B and the round was led by Walmart with participation from some existing investors.
➡️ As a result Flipkart's ownership of PhonePe is also being reduced from 100% to 87% but gives the company access to capital in a highly competitive & high-burn space. Flipkart will remain the major shareholder of PhonePe and will be an important part of the company though.
➡️ It's also been interesting to see how the company has grown with initially 50% of its transactions coming through Flipkart to now Flipkart being responsible for just 1% of the transactions on the app.
➡️ The payments space is certainly heating up with Google devoting a bunch of capital & resources to GooglePay, Facebook presumably doing the same with WhatsApp Pay and Paytm still being very well funded in the country.
➡️ This partial spin out certainly helps PhonePe raise more capital
2. https://bit.ly/37y3um9: Fisdom raises $7M led by PayU
➡️ Wealth management startup Fisdom has raised $7M in a round led by PayU with participation from other backers including Quona Capital and Saama Capital. The company had previously raised $11M in a round last October.
➡️ I hadn't realized PayU, the global online payments service provider, has made a couple of investments in India including DotPe and ZestMoney along with Fisdom.
➡️ Fisdom provides technology-enabled wealth management services including solutions for investments, savings, and protection. It seems like their Mutual Funds product is one of their main offerings and it competes with the likes of Paytm Money, Groww and even Zerodha (Coin) on that front.
➡️ The wealth management space also seems quite competitive with most companies roughly offering the same products and services to a point where these products are kind of commoditized. I still won't say I understand the intricacies of the space but with Groww, Paytm and Zerodha being at the scale they're at- I wonder how Fisdom manages to stay competitive.
Feedback & ❤️ always appreciated BONUS (Tweet of the day): https://twitter.com/shrinivassg/status/1334750063579435009
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