Digital payments firm PhonePe has acquired GigIndia, a marketplace for gig workers.
This is intended to strengthen its offerings to corporate and enterprise partners, the company said in a statement on Monday.
According to PhonePe, the acquisition will help it leverage freelancers on GigIndia’s platform and provide corporates and enterprises with blue-collar workforce for on-ground customer acquisition, sales, and distribution.
The acquisition is in line with PhonePe wanting to increase its direct revenue streams through bolstering its value proposition to enterprise partners.
Currently, GigIndia has a network of 1.5 million entrepreneurs, and over 100 enterprises as customers, which will integrate with PhonePe as part of the acquisition.
PhonePe will also onboard GigIndia’s over 50-member team. It will also look at rebranding GigIndia later this year.
PhonePe is eyeing a further 2-3 acquisitions this year to boost its financial and tech platform play, individuals aware of the company’s internal plans told ET on condition of anonymity.
“We are excited to welcome GigIndia’s team to PhonePe and leverage their domain expertise to offer value added services to our enterprise partners, helping them scale, expand and grow their businesses. GigIndia has already served many businesses, with its pool of high-quality, skilled freelance micro-entrepreneurs,” said Vivek Lohcheb, head of offline business at PhonePe.
The company declined to comment on the deal value.
PhonePe acquired point-of-sale business Zopper Retail in 2018. It also announced plans to acquire content discovery platform IndusOS last year, but that has been stuck in a legal tussle.
“PhonePe is a leader in the digital payments space, and we are delighted to be joining forces with them. GigIndia has been a trusted partner for fast-growing enterprises across India and in PhonePe we have found a like-minded partner who supports our vision,” said Sahil Sharma, chief executive officer, GigIndia in a statement.
In January, PhonePe said it had 350 million users overall, of which 150 million were monthly active users.
The company also said it had an offline acceptance network of 25 million stores and had processed $651 billion in annualized total payment value (TPV) as of December last year.
Source: Economic Times