PhonePe charting path to join elite club of start-ups; valuation soars

PhonePe has been aggressive at growing its user and merchant base

In 2016, when PhonePe was acquired by e-commerce firm Flipkart, nothing much was revealed about the valuation of the company, which was just about a year old then. 

But the best thing that the Flipkart management did then was to allow the payments firm to operate as an independent entity. This helped it to scale faster, riding on the digital payments wave that was already growing in the country. And even after global retail major Walmart acquired majority stake in parent Flipkart last year, it allowed PhonePe to maintain the same independence under the leadership of Samir Nigam, one of the