Cross-border payments platform Skydo has raised USD 10 million in Series A funding led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital (Susquehanna Asia VC), with participation from existing backer Elevation Capital, as it doubles down on building a full-stack financial infrastructure layer for Indian exporters.

The Bengaluru-based company currently serves over 30,000 Indian MSMEs, freelancers and startups across 50+ cities, processing cross-border payments in 32+ currencies. It is also among the first players to receive the Reserve Bank of India’s in-principle authorisation as a Payment Aggregator – Cross Border (PA-CB), positioning it as a regulated platform in a space that has traditionally been dominated by banks and a handful of global payment firms.

Fixing the ‘last-mile’ of India’s USD 2 trillion export ambition

India has set its sights on USD 2 trillion of exports by FY30, a target that rests heavily on the shoulders of MSMEs, service exporters, freelancers and digital-first businesses. Yet, for many of these exporters, receiving money from overseas clients remains slow, opaque and expensive.

According to Skydo, Indian exporters routinely lose 3-7% of their revenue to hidden forex mark-ups and layered fees. Payments can take days to arrive, and the documentation and compliance trail can stretch into weeks or months, locking up working capital and adding to back-office overheads.

Skydo positions itself as a “financial operating system” for Indian exporters, aiming to remove friction from every step of the cross-border receivables journey, from how clients pay, to how quickly funds settle, to how compliance is handled.

How Skydo’s platform works

On Skydo, exporters can collect payments locally from clients in multiple countries, instead of relying solely on traditional wire transfers or global platforms. These collections are processed with zero forex mark-up, transparent flat-fee pricing, and 24-hour settlement, according to the company.

Beyond moving money, the platform also handles the paperwork and workflows that surround a transaction. Skydo:

• Generates FIRA and other compliance documents instantly
• Offers accounts receivable tools such as invoicing and automated payment reminders
• Integrates with accounting systems for reconciliation and reporting

“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, 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.”

Challenging banks and global incumbents

Until now, MSME exporters and digital agencies in India have largely relied on traditional banks or global payment platforms such as PayPal, Wise or Payoneer to receive payments, each with its own trade-offs.

• Banks often charge opaque fees and run manual, time-consuming compliance processes.
• Global platforms, Skydo notes, can deduct up to 10% of invoice values as fees and are not built natively around the specific requirements of Indian exporters.

This gap has created room for a focused, India-first platform that can blend regulatory compliance, predictable pricing and speed.

“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, one of Skydo’s customers.

Another long-term user, Abhishek Agarwalla, Co-founder and CEO of AI interviewing company Fabric, credits the platform with eliminating the need to “haggle” on FX every time a client makes a payment. “We’ve saved thousands of hard-earned dollars since switching,” he said, adding that what stands out most is the team’s customer obsession, including visits by the founders to understand client pain points firsthand.

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4X growth and a USD 5 billion volume target

Skydo says it has grown 4X over the past year and is now targeting USD 5 billion in annualised payment volume within the next two years.

“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, Skydo. “With this round, we aim to expand our global footprint and secure payment licences in key geographies.”

The company’s regulated status and focus on risk controls are central to that pitch, especially as the Reserve Bank of India’s PA-CB framework sets a higher bar for players operating in cross-border payments.

Why Susquehanna Asia VC is backing Skydo

For Susquehanna Asia VC, which led the round, the opportunity lies in an Indian cross-border payments landscape that is simultaneously opening up and becoming more demanding on compliance and technology.

“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, 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. We are excited to partner with a company that meets the high bar for technological and risk capabilities set by the regulator, and we believe their model is perfectly suited to capturing high-volume B2B business.”

Elevation Capital, which has backed Skydo since its earliest days, is doubling down after a year of rapid scale.

“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, 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. We are thrilled to support this next phase of growth as Skydo continues to dismantle barriers and make global trade friction-free and seamless for Indian exporters.”

What the fresh capital will fund

Skydo plans to channel the USD 10 million round into broadening both its geographic reach and its product stack. Key priorities include:

• Geographic expansion: Enabling local collections across 20+ countries in Latin America, Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East.
• Global licensing: Securing regulatory licences in key international markets to deepen its cross-border capabilities.
• Card infrastructure: Scaling InstaLinks, its card-acceptance solution, to bring more exporters onto cards at roughly half the cost of legacy gateways.
• Compliance and reconciliation: Building a deeper compliance suite with enhanced reconciliation and reporting tools to reduce back-office effort for finance teams.
• Developer platform: Launching APIs and webhooks that let SaaS companies, marketplaces and fintechs embed Skydo’s global payment rails directly into their products.

Taken together, these moves are aimed at making Skydo not just a destination product for exporters, but also a payments infrastructure layer that other platforms can plug into.

A compliance-first, API-ready infrastructure player

Beyond the new funding, Skydo underscores its credentials as a compliance-first infrastructure provider. The company is an empanelled Amazon Global Selling PSP, holds SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certifications, and operates under RBI’s in-principle PA-CB approval.

For Indian exporters, from solo freelancers and digital agencies to technology startups and small manufacturers, that combination of regulatory oversight, predictable pricing and software-driven workflows is what Skydo is betting on as it tries to power a larger share of India’s future export dollar.

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