Skydo, a startup specializing in cross-border payments, has secured $5 million in a new equity round led by Elevation Capital, with contributions from several angel investors. This marks the second equity infusion for the company, following its initial $5 million raise in its first institutional round from Elevation Capital in 2022.
Skydo is currently awaiting approval for a payment aggregator cross-border license from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and primarily assists small businesses and freelancers in receiving payments from international clients.
The company’s future plans include expanding into outbound payments from India and catering to larger enterprises with comprehensive cross-border payment solutions, as stated by Srivatsan Sridhar, Skydo’s CEO. Additionally, Skydo is considering applying for a payment aggregator license from the central bank to offer domestic merchant payment services, which would allow the company to provide a full suite of payment solutions to its customers.
Skydo addresses the challenges of cross-border payments, which are often costly and difficult to track due to the involvement of multiple jurisdictions. The company offers a dashboard for businesses to monitor their financial transactions across different regions and helps them identify potential savings on hidden fees.
Currently, Skydo processes payments from over 100 countries in 32 currencies, with an annual total payment volume (TPV) run rate of approximately $120 million. The platform has onboarded around 6,000 businesses, with about one-third of them actively using the platform each month. With the recent funding, Skydo aims to achieve a fivefold increase in its TPV by the end of the current financial year.
Skydo was founded in 2022 by former PhonePe senior executive Movin Jain and Srivatsan Sridhar, who previously worked with the gold loan startup Rupeek. Mridul Arora, a partner at Elevation Capital, highlighted Skydo’s strong focus on governance and compliance, which is expected to enhance the startup’s credibility with larger businesses. Arora also mentioned that with the RBI’s cross-border payments license and a robust product offering, Skydo is well-positioned to capture a significant share of India’s large international payments market.
