BENGALURU, India — Walmart-backed digital payments firm PhonePe has received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India, or SEBI, for its planned initial public offering, people familiar with the matter said Tuesday. The green light puts the PhonePe IPO within striking distance of a domestic market debut expected in 2026, Jan. 20, 2026.
The decision was reported by Reuters, which said the company sought the regulator’s review after using a confidential filing route in September 2025. That process allows companies to keep draft offering documents out of the public domain until closer to launch.
PhonePe is expected to follow with an updated draft red herring prospectus (UDRHP) — a public version of the filing that typically precedes final pricing and the roadshow — according to The Economic Times.
PhonePe IPO: what SEBI’s approval unlocks
SEBI’s clearance is a major regulatory hurdle, but it is not the finish line. For the PhonePe IPO, the next stretch is about turning an approval into an executable deal: updating disclosures, lining up intermediaries and picking a market window that can support a large fintech float.
Investors will be watching for three practical signals: the timing of the public UDRHP filing, clarity on which exchanges the company plans to list on and whether PhonePe frames the offering as a liquidity event for shareholders or a capital raise to fund expansion.
PhonePe IPO snapshot: size, structure and valuation signals
Early indications point to a share sale dominated by existing investors. Moneycontrol reported the PhonePe IPO could seek a valuation of about $15 billion and raise about 12,000 crore rupees (about $1.35 billion) through an offer for sale, rather than a large issue of new shares.
That structure matters for how the market reads the deal. A mostly secondary offering can be interpreted as a confidence test for public-market pricing — especially for a company whose private-market valuation has been widely reported in the low double-digit billions of dollars — while leaving room for future fundraising if PhonePe scales deeper into lending, insurance and wealth services.
PhonePe IPO timeline: a multi-year runway to a domestic listing
The PhonePe IPO did not begin with today’s approval. In 2022, the company completed its shift of domicile from Singapore to India, a complex corporate move often viewed as a prerequisite for a domestic listing, as ETtech reported.
In early 2025, PhonePe said it was preparing for a public listing after reporting its first annual profit — and Reuters also flagged the company’s scale in UPI (Unified Payments Interface) payments and merchant reach, according to Reuters.
By September 2025, PhonePe had filed for an IPO via the confidential route and was targeting a mid-2026 listing. Even then, Walmart emphasized that a filing “does not necessarily mean PhonePe will undertake the IPO,” as Reuters reported, a reminder that market conditions can still influence final timing.
With SEBI’s nod now secured, the PhonePe IPO story turns to execution: when the public document lands, how the company positions the deal and whether Indian equity markets reward the dominant UPI player with a valuation that can hold through listing day.
