India's most valuable fintech firm PhonePe expects to achieve operational profit by 2025, a top official of the company said on Wednesday.
PhonePe founder and CEO Sameer Nigam told PTI that the company's payment, advertising, banking and insurance businesses will reach breakeven by the time the company becomes operationally profitable at the group level.
While speaking on the sidelines of the launch PhonePe's stock trading platform Share.Market, Nigam said that PhonePe has now become a household brand and a lot of financial services are being distributed on PhonePe, both on the consumer and merchant side.
"We don't have to spend much on the marketing side there. I think at the group level, we have enough capital to deploy on Pincode and Share.Market, let them grow while we still hit EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) positive by 2025. I think it's doable," Nigam said. Without sharing financial numbers, he said that the company is on track to achieve EBITDA break even as its revenue is rising and losses are reducing.
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The US retail giant Walmart group firm has raised USD 850 million in the latest funding round at pre-money valuation of USD 12 billion.
"By the time, the group is at breakeven, lending and even insurance should be EBITDA positive by themselves because they are high margin and they are low on distribution cost. Pincode and Share.Market will require branding," Nigam said.
When asked about the opportunity for the company to foray into stock brokerage segment at a time the market already has established players, Nigam said incumbents will always be there in the market.
"When you think you can do something that can shape the market, that's the right time to enter.
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"When we acquired Wealthdesk and Open IQ, the founders were building IPs and quant research model that we felt will change the way the new age Investors will invest in the equity market over the next 5-7 years," Nigam said.
Wealthdesk founder Ujjwal Jain will lead Share.Market as its CEO.
Nigam said that millions of Indians are entering the share market but after buying one or two stocks they stop and such consumers need to be catered.
"If you look at wealth, the approach that we are taking, I think it will have large 100-200 million customer base in the next 7-10 years," Nigam said.
He said that foray in stock brokerage segment has completed financial services basked of the company.
"Consumer lending remains to be launched. Hopefully, we are done with launches for this year. The idea is to build on launches, find the product market match," Nigam said.
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