GigIndia, a network of freelance micro-entrepreneurs, was acquired by the digital payments platform PhonePe on Monday.

PhonePe, a digital payments platform, announced the acquisition of GigIndia, a network for independent micro-entrepreneurs, on Monday.

GigIndia, which has 1.5 million entrepreneurs and over 100 companies as clients, will merge with PhonePe as part of the purchase, the firm said in a statement.

The amount of the buyout was not disclosed. PhonePe will use GigIndia’s network of freelancing micro-entrepreneurs to assist corporates and companies in acquiring new consumers and expanding their distribution channels.

PhonePe’s products and value proposition to corporate and enterprise partners will also be strengthened as a result of the purchase.

According to certain estimations, India’s freelancing community sector would be worth USD 20-30 billion by 2025, according to the announcement.

Vivek Lohcheb, Head of Offline Business at PhonePe, commented on the purchase, saying,

“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.

“Sahil Sharma, CEO at GigIndia, said PhonePe is a leader in the digital payments space, and added “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,” he added.

PhonePe’s platform has over 365 million registered users and is approved at over 27 million merchant outlets in India.

The business recently reported a 200 percent increase in offline transactions over the previous year. In the final month of 2021, it handled over a billion peer-to-merchant transactions.

Sahil Sharma and Aditya Shirole, engineering students from Pune, created GigIndia in 2017. Since the start of the epidemic, the B2B marketplace for on-demand task completion has seen a threefold increase in income.

GigIndia has worked with over 100 business customers, and their app has had over a million downloads from the Google Play Store. It has approximately one million registered employees spread throughout 200 cities in India.