Flipkart infuses Rs 5.18 billion of fresh capital into payments app PhonePe

This is its first investment in PhonePe since the e-commerce giant announced it would pump in $500 million into the digital payment app last October

Flipkart-owned payments app PhonePe has received a fresh funding of Rs 5.18 billion (approx $79.6 million) from its parent company as it looks to take on Google and WhatsApp in the fast-growing digital payments space in India.

The fund infusion is the first one since Flipkart announced that it would invest $500 million in PhonePe in October last year. At the time, Flipkart had already invested around Rs 4.4 billion in the digital payments company since its acquisition in April 2016.

The infusion in PhonePe was made by Singapore-based Flipkart Payments Pvt. Ltd. through the allocation of 2.4 million equity