PhonePe, the market leader in UPI transactions and financial services, announced a significant declined of 44 percent in losses incurred during fiscal 2021 (FY21), on a stand-alone basis, compared to the previous fiscal. Losses from operations, excluding expenses related to the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) and costs, were $888 million in FY’21 as per the regulatory filings filed by PhonePe. Just to put things in perspective PhonePe reported a loss of Rs 1,570 crore during the previous financial year.
PhonePe’s fiscal year (FY’21) ended on March 31, 2021.
The decrease in loss is due to the lower operating costs, caused by lockdown due to Covid19, along with a significant increase in revenue. The revenue of PhonePe soared from $372 million in FY20 to a whopping $690 million in FY21.
A whopping 85 percent increase in year-on-year (YoY) revenue growth was driven by a dramatic increase in transactions through the platform, as the company accounted for a large share of transactions through United Payment Interface (UPI) and Bharat Bill Payment System (BBPS).
Gross margins increased from 60 percent to 85 percent in just one year. The Walmart-backed company also offered the largest ESOP, amounting to Rs 843 crore, for employees during the fiscal year, up significantly from Rs 206 crores in FY20.
The loss of PhonePe after taxes and excluding ESOP expenses was Rs 1,728 crore. That’s a 2.5 percent decline from 1,772 crore for FY20.
The company’s expense totaled Rs. 2,455 crore in the last fiscal year, which was up 11 percent from the Rs 2,202 crore in FY’20. Also, total income grew by more than 70% to reach 725 crores in FY21, up from 427 crores.
PhonePe is responsible for the majority of UPI monthly volume as well as 47 percent of the number of transactions. The most recent data released from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) on BBPS for September indicated that with 1.65 billion monthly transactions PhonePe is the leader in the market, accounting for 45 percent of the volume share. NPCI reported that 3.65 billion UPI transactions were recorded in September 2021.
Digital transactions also increased in FY21 as people shifted to online payment options in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic which caused the nationwide lockdown. During the testing time, PhonePe was the top choice by users and became a market leader for UPI payment transactions by December of 2020, leapfrogging Google Pay. In March, PhonePe became the first UPI player to surpass $1 billion in terms of monthly transactions.
In 2015, the company was founded with former Flipkart management Sameer Nigam Rahul Chari, as well as Burzin Engineer the company now has more than 300 million users registered. Apart from payment services the platform also provides insurance, purchasing gold as well as mutual fund services.