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PhonePe clears regulatory hurdle, sets stage for India IPO
MUMBAI: PhonePe, the Walmart-backed digital payments firm, has received regulatory approval to proceed with its stock market listing, clearing a key hurdle after confidentially filing for an initial public offering in September, reports Reuters.
The IPO is expected to include partial share sales by existing investors including Walmart, Microsoft and Tiger Global.
The listing comes as India’s primary markets continue to run hot, with equity fundraising touching record levels in 2025. PhonePe is targeting a market debut by mid-2026. The company was last valued at $12 billion in 2023, when it raised funds from private investors.
Founded in 2015, PhonePe is India’s largest payments platform on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), commanding over 45 per cent market share by transaction volume as of December 2025. It processed 9.8 billion of the 21.6 billion UPI transactions recorded in August, according to data from the National Payments Corporation of India.
The company counts more than 600 million registered users and serves nearly 50 million merchants nationwide. A delay by Indian regulators in enforcing market-share caps on UPI in 2024 has benefited dominant players such as PhonePe and Google Pay.
Ahead of the IPO, PhonePe disclosed that its losses narrowed to Rs 17.2 billion ($189 million) in the year ended March 2025, from Rs 19.96 billion a year earlier, signalling improving financial discipline as it prepares to tap public markets.
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MakeMyTrip partners with OpenAI to boost AI-powered travel planning
Conversational AI now guides travellers from inspiration straight to booking
GURUGRAM: MakeMyTrip, India’s leading online travel company, has teamed up with OpenAI to bring a fresh twist to AI-driven travel planning. The collaboration integrates OpenAI’s APIs into MakeMyTrip’s app, making it easier than ever for travellers to move from chatting about dream trips to booking them.
The move centres around MakeMyTrip’s Myra interface, a GenAI trip planning assistant that now handles over 50,000 conversations a day in languages ranging from English and Hindi to Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. Myra helps travellers explore options, create itineraries and book flights, hotels and extras without the usual hassle of searching and filtering.
MakeMyTrip co-founder and group CEO Rajesh Magow said, “With OpenAI, we turn curiosity into confident decisions. When travellers start their journey through conversation, MakeMyTrip becomes a seamless extension of that discovery process. AI combined with our travel data makes it possible to deliver personalised, bookable options at scale.”
OpenAI managing director- international Oliver Jay added, “MakeMyTrip is showing how AI can make travel planning feel more like a conversation than a chore. Advanced AI isn’t just about back-end efficiencies, it’s about transforming the way travellers experience and engage with the platform.”
MakeMyTrip has long invested in AI across the travel lifecycle, from inspiration and discovery to booking and post-sales support. Nearly half of Myra’s queries now come from tier-2 and smaller cities, and voice interactions are booming outside metros, making AI travel assistance more accessible than ever.
With this partnership, MakeMyTrip is not just keeping up with AI trends, it’s aiming to lead the way, turning every traveller’s whim into a smooth, bookable adventure.
