Skydo: India's Cross-Border Payments Platform

#67

Jun 26, 2026

TLDR

Skydo is a Bengaluru-based cross-border payments platform that lets Indian exporters, freelancers, and small businesses collect — and, more recently, send — international payments. It is not a bank and not a consumer remittance app; it is a business-focused payments company operating under India’s Payment Aggregator – Cross Border (PA-CB) framework.

Founded: 2022 in Bengaluru by Srivatsan Sridhar (CEO) and Movin Jain (Skydo)
Funding: roughly US$19.7 million in equity across three rounds, most recently a US$10 million Series A in December 2025 (Entrackr)
Lead investors: Elevation Capital (seed and pre-Series A) and Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital (Series A) (YourStory)
Scale: 40,000+ businesses served and US$850 million+ in annualised payment volume, a company figure as of May 2026, with collections from 150+ countries in 32+ currencies (Indian Startup Times)
Core product: virtual local receiving accounts, conversion at the mid-market rate with no foreign-exchange markup, and automated compliance documentation (Infinity review)
Key infrastructure partners: HDFC Bank, DBS Bank, Currencycloud (a Visa company), and Banking Circle (Skydo)
Regulatory status: final Reserve Bank of India PA-CB authorisation in January 2026, outward-payments approval and a GIFT City Payment Service Provider licence in May 2026 (CXOToday), and registration with Canada's FINTRAC as a foreign money services business (2026) (FINTRAC MSB Registry)

Origins

Skydo was founded in 2022 by Srivatsan Sridhar and Movin Jain to address a problem Sridhar knew first-hand. He grew up around his family’s automotive export business and saw how international payments routinely arrived late, arrived short, or disappeared between intermediary banks, with compliance paperwork following months later (Skydo on LinkedIn). The company’s framing is that Indian exporters lose between 3% and 7% of revenue to foreign-exchange mark-ups and opaque fees on traditional channels (Tech Startups). Skydo began as a receive-only collections tool and has since expanded toward a two-sided platform handling both inbound and outbound flows.

What It Is and Isn’t

Skydo is a payments platform for businesses, not a bank and not a deposit-taking institution. It issues virtual receiving accounts in overseas markets — these let an Indian exporter’s client pay as though making a local transfer, while the underlying banking is provided by partner institutions rather than by Skydo itself (Infinity review). It is not a consumer money-transfer or non-resident remittance app; its customers are exporters, freelancers, software firms, and Amazon sellers. It does not charge a percentage of each payment plus a foreign-exchange spread, the model used by PayPal and Payoneer; instead it charges a flat fee and converts at the live mid-market rate (BriskPe review). Because the service is structured through a foreign entity, India’s 18% Goods and Services Tax (GST) applies to Skydo’s fees for Indian customers (Infinity review).

Market Position

Skydo sits in the Indian cross-border receivables segment, competing with global platforms such as PayPal, Wise, and Payoneer, and with a cohort of India-built challengers including BriskPe, Xflow, and Infinity (CB Insights). The macro backdrop is India’s stated goal of US$2 trillion in goods and services exports by the 2030 financial year, with micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) expected to drive much of it (Tech Startups). Within that market, Skydo orients toward exporters with mid-to-large invoices, where a flat fee is cheaper than a percentage-based one. It is a venture-funded challenger rather than a volume leader; the data provider Tracxn ranks it among the more prominent of roughly 188 tracked competitors (Tracxn).

Product Portfolio

Virtual receiving accounts. Skydo provides local account details in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Europe, and other markets — 10 or more countries — supporting collections in 32+ currencies. Overseas clients pay locally; Skydo converts to Indian rupees (INR) at the live mid-market rate with no markup and settles to the customer’s Indian bank account, typically within 24 hours (Infinity review).

Compliance automation. The platform generates a Foreign Inward Remittance Advice (FIRA) instantly per payment, supports electronic Bank Realisation Certificates (eBRC), and produces GST-compliant invoices — the documents Indian exporters need for tax and audit purposes (Skydo).

InstaLinks (Skydo Payment Links). Card and Automated Clearing House (ACH) acceptance for exporters whose clients prefer to pay by card, which Skydo markets at lower cost than legacy gateways (Skydo blog).

Amazon Global Selling. Skydo is an Amazon payment-service-provider-approved partner, offering tailored pricing and automated export documentation for marketplace sellers (Skydo blog).

Pricing across the platform is tiered: a flat US$19 for payments up to US$2,000, US$29 for US$2,001–US$10,000, and 0.3% above US$10,000, with custom rates for monthly volumes over roughly US$100,000 (Infinity review). Independent reviews note the flat fee is competitive on larger invoices but works out to roughly 2% or more on small, sub-US$2,000 payments (BriskPe review).

Traction

Skydo’s reported scale has grown quickly, and figures vary by reporting date. The company served about 6,000 exporters in August 2024 (Business Standard), 30,000+ by December 2025 (YourStory), and 40,000+ by May 2026 (Indian Startup Times). On volume, Skydo reported crossing US$100 million in cumulative payments by August 2024 (Business Standard) and US$850 million+ in annualised volume by May 2026 (Business News Week); a founding investor described the run-rate as approaching US$1 billion in June 2026 (Skydo on LinkedIn). The company says it processed roughly four times more payment value year-on-year as of its December 2025 raise, and has set a target of US$5 billion in annualised volume within two years (Business Standard). Operating revenue was ₹9.1 crore, about US$1.1 million, for the financial year ended March 2025, per Tracxn filings data; the company has not disclosed profitability (Tracxn).

Funding

Total equity raised is approximately US$19.7 million (Entrackr), alongside more than 50 angel investors (Skydo). One database, PitchBook, lists a US$81 million total that is inconsistent with the company’s statements and press reporting; the US$19.7 million figure is the one stated by the company and corroborated across coverage (PitchBook).

Leadership

Skydo runs a deliberately flat structure, and its public leadership is centred on the two founders (Skydo on LinkedIn).

Srivatsan Sridhar — Co-founder and CEO. More than 15 years’ experience, previously at McKinsey, Rupeek, and Ola; ran his family’s automotive export business (Skydo).
Movin Jain — Co-founder. A graduate of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad who began as a trader at Barclays Bank in London before more than a decade in product and leadership roles at InMobi, Ola, and PhonePe (Skydo).
Prashanth — Payments partnerships and solutions. Roughly a decade at Citibank before leading banking partnerships at Skydo (Skydo blog).
Awadhesh Ranjan — Head of Risk and Compliance. The company’s public spokesperson on its RBI authorisation (CB Insights).

Competitive Map

Skydo’s pricing advantage is clearest on larger invoices; on small tickets, percentage-based rivals can be cheaper (BriskPe review). Its more distinctive position is regulatory: relatively few peers hold both inbound and outbound PA-CB authorisation and a GIFT City licence (CXOToday).

Regulatory

Skydo operates under the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Payment Aggregator – Cross Border (PA-CB) framework. It received in-principle authorisation in early 2025, final authorisation for inward/export collections on 9 January 2026, and approval for outward remittances in May 2026 (Tracxn; CXOToday). Also in May 2026, it received an in-principle Payment Service Provider (PSP) licence from the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) to operate from Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT City), India's offshore financial hub, enabling multi-currency collections, electronic-money accounts, and merchant acquiring (Indian Startup Times). The company is ISO 27001:2022 certified and operates under India's Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and know-your-customer rules (XFlow comparison). Outside India, Skydo is registered with Canada's Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (FINTRAC) as a foreign money services business — the category that applies to an entity without a Canadian place of business that provides money services to clients in Canada — allowing it to lawfully serve Canadian-side flows (FINTRAC MSB Registry). No enforcement actions or litigation were identified in public records.

Recent Milestones

May 2026: Received an IFSCA GIFT City PSP licence and RBI approval for outward payments, extending the platform to two-sided flows (CXOToday).
January 2026: Received final RBI PA-CB authorisation for export collections, among the first fintechs to do so (Tracxn).
December 2025: Raised a US$10 million Series A led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital and announced US expansion and a 20-country collection rollout (YourStory).
September 2025: Partnered with Veem for US-dollar collections (Tracxn).
December 2024: Gained Amazon Global Selling PSP approval (Tracxn).
August 2024: Partnered with Banking Circle and raised a US$5 million pre-Series A (Tracxn).

Footprint

Skydo is headquartered in the HSR Layout area of Bengaluru (Skydo). Headcount figures vary across databases — from 77 (Tracxn, May 2025) to around 170 (cited by a co-founder in 2026) — reflecting rapid hiring (Tracxn). The company serves customers across 50 or more Indian cities and supports collections from 150+ countries (Indian Startup Times).

Outlook

Trackable items a reader could verify over the next 6 to 12 months:

US launch. Skydo said in December 2025 it would expand to the United States, targeting small and medium businesses; progress and any US entity or licensing can be checked (Business Standard).
Collection corridors. The company announced local collections across more than 20 countries in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East (YourStory).
GIFT City build-out. The in-principle IFSCA PSP licence is expected to convert to full operations; live multi-currency and merchant-acquiring products would mark execution (Indian Startup Times).
Outward payments. Whether the new outbound capability launches and scales beyond collections (CXOToday).
Volume target. Skydo’s stated goal of US$5 billion in annualised payment volume within two years of December 2025 (Business Standard).

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