Cross-border payments startup Skydo raises $5 million in pre-series A round led by Elevation Capital

Skydo founders Srivatsan Sridhar and Movin Jain

Skydo, a cross-border payments platform for enterprises, MSMEs and freelancers, has secure $5 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by existing investor Elevation Capital.

The Bengaluru-based firm, which enables clients to accept international payments, had in 2022 raised $5.2 million in a seed round led by Elevation Capital.

"We want entrepreneurs to focus on growing their businesses, not on chasing payments or managing compliance. Over the past year, Skydo has achieved 10x growth ," co-founder Movin Jain said on August 13. "Our goal is to empower exporters and enterprises to operate seamlessly on a global scale, aiming to process $750 million by 2025."

The firm is awaiting approval for a cross-border payment aggregator (PA-CB) licence from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Skydo was founded in 2022 by Srivatsan Sridhar, former head of business at OLA, and Jain, a former head of payments product at PhonePe.

The platform has processed over $100 million in payments for more than 6,000 Indian small and medium size business (SMB) exporters since its inception.

It claims to connects six global banks and multiple international payment systems, enabling customers to collect payments in 32 currencies from key markets such as the US, the UK, Canada, Europe, Singapore and the UAE, which account for 80-90 percent of remittances into India.

“We are excited to build Skydo at a time when India's manufacturing and services exports are growing at an unprecedented rate and help small businesses scale globally. As India targets $2 trillion in exports by 2030 and the gig economy continues to expand, we're focused on making cross-border payments as cost-effective as possible,” Sridhar, who is also the CEO, said.

The fresh capital will be deployed to acquire payments licences across geographies, expand internationally and enable customers to send and receive business payments across multiple countries, the founders said.

Mridul Arora, partner at Elevation Capital, said the firm's innovative and transparent approach was what the market needed. Skydo would greatly enhance international transactions and provide value to both small and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, Arora said.