Skydo: Simplifying International Payments, One Transaction at a Time
It is ironic that in the era of instant payments, business owners still feel stressed about sending or receiving payments across borders. At Skydo, our objective has always been clear: "How can we take the stress out of international business payments?" Every discussion we have, and every feature we build, is geared towards that singular goal.
Today, we are thrilled to announce that Skydo has raised USD 5M in a pre-Series A round led by Elevation Capital, bringing us several steps closer to achieving our vision. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all our investors, partners and customers for their immense faith and belief in us.
The Road to Skydo
Skydo's journey began with two friends, Movin Jain and Srivatsan Sridhar, who united to answer a critical question: "How can we make global payments as seamless as UPI?" Srivatsan's managerial experience in his family's automotive export business gave him first-hand insight into the challenges exporters face with international payments. He recalls having to cancel a large and profitable contract with a Turkish customer due to challenges in receiving payments.. His deep empathy for the problem, combined with Movin's decade-long experience in tech and fintech, formed the perfect team to build Skydo.
Like most startups, the path to building Skydo has been far from easy and it continues to be so. We officially began in April 2022, and since then, securing our first client, first transaction, and first employee has been anything but a cakewalk. Srivatsan and Movin travelled across the country, speaking with exporters to gain invaluable insights into their struggles with international payments.
An entrepreneur from Ahmedabad shared his frustration about paying nearly 7-8% of his hard-earned foreign income to his payment service provider. Similarly, an IT business founder from Karnal expressed willingness to pay a flat fee but questioned why he had to share a percentage of his income. These interactions underscored the depth of the problem they set out to solve, driving their commitment to creating a more seamless and cost-effective solution for cross-border payments payments. From making cold calls and giving demos to spending sleepless nights perfecting the technology behind the product, the small founding team did it all. However, it wasn't all work and no play. The founders fondly recall how a full day of work was put on hold after indulging in ghee-laden parathas at Murthal, after meeting some exporters in Panipat. These moments of camaraderie kept the team bonded and motivated through the many challenges of building a company.
Finally, in November 2022, Skydo executed its first transaction, and since then, there has been no turning back. From November 2022 to August 2024, we have enabled 5,000+ businesses to simplify their international payments. We process over USD 100M of payments annually, and we are just getting started.
As a young company in the cross-border payments space, partnering with established banks and navigating regulations and compliance has been a constant learning experience. Being one of the first companies in this sector, we didn't have a blueprint to follow. Much of our processes and systems have been developed through trial and error. However, our customers' faith in us has always kept us going.
What Our Customers Say
We are genuinely passionate to solve for our customers—and place their needs at the centre of everything we do. Our customers have recognised and appreciated our continuous efforts to bring them the best. It is their constant inputs and feedback that has inspired us to constantly improve our product.
Life at Skydo
If you imagine the team behind Skydo as a group of ultra-serious professionals with their noses buried in computers all day, you couldn’t be more wrong. As cliché as it sounds, we truly believe in working hard and playing harder. Lively banter, playing sports together, celebrating special moments, great food, and frequent get-togethers are all part of life at Skydo. We’re committed to creating a work environment where our team genuinely enjoys coming to work.
What Lies Ahead
This latest round of funding helps us take our commitment to solve for international payments one step further. In the coming months, we will be launching many new features - like card payments, import payments from India, deeper integration with accounting platforms, and expanding to support e-commerce, to name a few. We will also be expanding globally, to support exporters in more countries. As always, our endeavour will be to take care of their payments challenges, allowing businesses to focus on what they do best - grow their business globally!
Onwards and upwards!
