Exclusive: Elevation Capital backs cross border payments startup Skydo

Cross border payments platform Skydo has raised a seed round led by Elevation Capital, two sources aware of the development told Entrackr. The fundraising development comes at a time when a few startups in this space raised money recently.

“Skydo has raised around $5-6 million in seed capital led by Elevation Capital with participation from a couple of more VCs. The deal is already closed but the founding team did not disclose it anywhere,” said one of the sources on the condition of anonymity.

Four months old Skydo is an online platform to receive payments from overseas businesses. The company offers a platform to receive international payments with real-time payment tracking.

Launched by Srivatsan Sridhar and Movin Jain, Skydo helps SMBs and MSMEs by simplifying their banking operations, documentation management, and workflow automation solutions.

Previously, Sridhar was a senior vice president at digital gold loan platform Rupeek and a senior director at cab-hailing company Ola. He was also with McKinsey & Company for more than a year. Jain, too, is a seasoned startup professional. Before Skydo, Jain was the director of product management at digital payments firm PhonePe and also served as vice president of products at Meesho, associate director of product at Ola, worked with InMobi and founded galleri5.

“Skydo may also look for a new fundraise and emerge as one of the top-funded new-age startups in this space as the company is eyeing a significant market share in the coming months,” said another source, requesting anonymity.

Skydo founders and Elevation did not respond to Entrackr’s queries until the publication of the story.

So far, cross border remittances have been done by traditional methods such as SWIFT, correspondent banking, postal services, Rupee Drawing Arrangement (RDA), and Money Transfer Service Scheme (MTSS). The transaction fee for these payments typically ranges from 0.3% to 20% of the total amount transferred. New-age startups such as EximPe, Salt and Payglocal are looking to disrupt this space by making this process affordable for smaller merchants.

While Salt raised $500K in October from top angels, EximPe scooped up $3.5 million led by Leo Capital in April this year. Most recently, Tiger Global led a $15 million round in Sequoia India-backed PayGlocal. Entrackr had exclusively reported the development.