PhonePe's Founder & CEO Sameer Nigam, while speaking about competitive pressures, particularly from well-funded rivals like Paytm, said, "PhonePe was started in India. To compete effectively, I sold my entire company to Flipkart." On being called a foreign-owned company because of PhonePe's Walmart ownership, Nigam said Walmart paid a billion dollars in taxes to get PhonePe domiciled in India.