Skydo raises $10M Series A to fix cross-border payments as India’s exports target $2 trillion

Skydo has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round as India pushes toward a $2 trillion export target and exporters remain stuck with slow, expensive cross-border payments.

The Bengaluru-based fintech startup‘s latest round was led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, with existing backer Elevation Capital joining the raise. Skydo serves more than 30,000 Indian exporters, freelancers, startups, and MSMEs across 50+ cities, processing payments in 32 currencies. The company was among the first to receive the Reserve Bank of India’s in-principle approval under the Payment Aggregator Cross Border framework. This regulatory milestone cleared the path for focused players to build a compliant international payment infrastructure from India.

India’s exporters are scaling quickly, yet the financial pipes behind global trade remain outdated. Small businesses routinely lose 3 to 7 percent of revenue to hidden FX markups and unclear fees. Client payments can take days to arrive, then stall further as exporters work through bank paperwork, reconciliation gaps, and compliance filings that stretch into weeks. For cash-constrained businesses, these delays lock up working capital at the worst possible moment.

Susquehanna Asia VC leads Skydo’s $10M Series A as exporters feel the pain

Skydo is positioning itself as a financial operating system built for exporters rather than a thin payments layer. Exporters collect funds locally from overseas clients, settle within 24 hours, and pay a flat, transparent fee with no FX spread. Compliance documents such as FIRA are generated automatically at the point of settlement. Invoicing, payment reminders, and accounting integrations are integrated into the same workflow, turning what used to be a manual back-office headache into a single interface.

“Indian exporters are second to none in their global ambition. Skydo aims to enable them with world-class payment infrastructure built from India for the world,” said Srivatsan Sridhar, co-founder and CEO of Skydo. “This funding fuels our mission to build the financial operating system for global commerce – from collections, payouts, card acceptance, compliance automation, and accounting reconciliation.”

Until recently, Indian exporters had limited choices. Traditional banks relied on manual processes and unclear fee structures. Global platforms such as PayPal, Wise, and Payoneer offered speed but often deducted up to 10 percent of the invoice value and lacked workflows built around Indian compliance rules. Skydo focused on solving that gap from day one.

Customers say the savings show up immediately. “Skydo has simplified our cross-border payments and cut our finance costs dramatically. Their fixed fees and mid-market rates give us full predictability and better value than any bank we’ve worked with,” said Sushant Yadav, founder of marketing agency Optimite.

“I started using Skydo shortly after their launch, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Skydo saved me from haggling with banks on FX rates every time I received a payment, and we’ve saved thousands of hard-earned dollars since switching,” said Abhishek Agarwalla, co-founder and CEO of AI interviewing startup Fabric. “What really stands out, though, is how customer-obsessed they are. I still remember the entire Skydo team, including Movin and Srivatsan, showing up at our office to listen to our problems firsthand. Most products make money, but Skydo has earned something far rarer: customer trust.”

The company says payment volume has grown fourfold over the past year. Skydo now targets $5 billion in annualized volume within two years, a scale that would place it among the larger B2B cross-border platforms built from India.

“We’re demonstrating that India has the talent, compliance muscle, and regulatory clarity to build global financial infrastructure from here, for the world,” said Movin Jain, co-founder of Skydo. “With this round, we aim to expand our global footprint and secure payment licences in key geographies.”

Investors see regulatory alignment as a key differentiator. “India’s evolving cross-border payment landscape, with the introduction of the new PA-CB framework, demands high-quality, focused players with a technological edge,” said Bhavanipratap Rana, investment advisor to Susquehanna Asia VC. “Skydo’s focus on solving the real costs of cross-border transactions – opacity, time, compliance risk, and working capital blockage is a clear differentiator.”

Elevation Capital, which backed Skydo early, views execution speed as the company’s edge. “Since partnering with Skydo at their inception, we have been incredibly impressed by the team’s speed, execution, and unwavering product focus,” said Mridul Arora, partner at Elevation Capital. “They have done a stellar job scaling the platform 4X in the last year alone, building what is truly a customer-centric international payments powerhouse.”

The new capital will be used to roll out local collections across more than 20 countries spanning Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Skydo also plans to secure payment licenses across international markets, scale card acceptance through its InstaLinks product at lower costs than legacy gateways, deepen reconciliation and reporting tools, and open developer APIs for SaaS companies, marketplaces, and fintechs that want to embed global payment rails.

Founded in Bengaluru, Skydo runs a unified stack covering collections, payouts, cards, compliance automation, and APIs. The company is an empaneled Amazon Global Selling PSP and holds SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications. With India’s export ambitions rising rapidly, Skydo is betting that modern infrastructure, transparent pricing, and a solid regulatory foundation can finally bring cross-border payments in line with the pace of global trade.