Skydo, a cross-border payment startup, has secured $5 million in its latest equity round. Elevation Capital led the round, with participation from several angel investors. This follows a previous $5 million investment from Elevation Capital in 2022.
Skydo supports small businesses and freelancers in accepting payments from outside India. The startup also awaits a payment aggregator cross-border license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
“Eventually, we want to get into payouts from India and also start working with larger companies supporting all their cross-border payment requirements,” said Srivatsan Sridhar, chief executive officer of Skydo.
Sridhar added that the company is evaluating applying for the payment aggregator licence from the central bank, which will also help them offer domestic merchant payment services.
“This might help us complete the entire product suite for our customers, so we might go for the PA licence as well. First, we hope to receive the cross-border licence from the regulator,” he said.
Since many jurisdictions are typically involved, cross-border payments are expensive and difficult to track. Skydo offers a dashboard for businesses to track the money movement across geographies and also helps them track how much they are saving in terms of hidden fees.
Skydo allows the processing of payments from over 100 countries in 32 currencies. It is currently processing an annual total payment volume (TPV) run rate of around $120 million.
“We have onboarded around 6,000 businesses and around one-third of them are actively using our platform every month,” Sridhar said. “With the fresh funds, we are aiming to clock a five-time jump in our TPV by the end of this financial year.”
Founded in 2022 by former PhonePe executive Movin Jain and Sridharan Srivatsa, formerly with Rupeek, Skydo aims to make international transactions smoother.
Mridul Arora, a partner at Elevation Capital, highlighted Skydo’s strong focus on governance and compliance. He believes that with the RBI’s license and a robust product, Skydo is well-positioned to capture a significant share of the international payments market in India.
