Cross-border payments have always been the Achilles Heel for exporters and freelance professionals with overseas clients. Lack of transparency and delays in receiving payments, high processing fees of banks and payment gateways and absence of real-time tracking services often lead to losses for businesses.
Amid this, homegrown cross-border f
1) Offers lower fees and transparent rates : Charges for receiving overseas payments through gateways like PayPal and Stripe can range from 4% to 10% whereas Skydo offers a fixed charge of $19 for transactions below $ 2000 and $29 for transactions over $2000
2) Regulatory Compliance: Indian fintechs like Skydo, being local, have a better grasp of the regulatory environment in their specific markets. This can be a significant advantage when navigating complex cross-border financial regulations.
3)Innovative Technologies: Utilizing cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, AI, and machine learning, Skydo offers innovative services such as real-time tracking of cross-border payments, enhanced security, and personalized customer experiences.
4) Focus on Under-served Segments: Skydo focuses on segments that are under-served by PayPal and Stripe, such as small businesses or freelancers, offering more specialized and tailored services. Skydo operates under RBI’s OPGSP (Online Payment Gateway Service Provider) framework. Currently, this facility serves as the primary payment method for over 300,000 Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSME) exporters across India.
5) Faster Processing Times: The speed of transactions is a critical factor in cross-border dealings. Indian fintechs are focusing on reducing the time it takes to process international transactions, offering a competitive edge over traditional banking systems and some established fintech players.
About the founders of Skydo
Srivatsan Sridhar, Founder and CEO of Skydo, is passionate about solving large and impactful business problems through Technology. Srivatsan has led many leadership roles in start-ups in Bangalore. He was Senior vice president, leading business at digital gold loan platform Rupeek and a senior director at cab-hailing company Ola. He has also worked with consulting firms such McKinsey & Company. Prior to working in Bangalore, he was leading an automotive parts business in Chennai which was founded by his father. Realising that several of the payments related problems that he faced as a goods exporter, remain unsolved, was one of the inspirations in starting Skydo. Srivatsan is a mechanical engineer and has done his engineering at Coimbatore Institute of Technology and his MBA from Indian School of Business.
Movin Jain, Co-Founder, Skydo- Movin is committed towards building internet products and platforms that help make people’s lives easier. He has worked with different start-ups in Bangalore which include one of India’s biggest payments platform PhonePe where he worked closely with NPCI, RBI, Banks & Payment Gateways to ensure seamless user experience. In his decade-long journey he has also worked with OLA cabs, Meesho and InMobi. Skydo is his second start-up, previously he founded and was the CTO of Galleri5 a marketplace for social media influencers. He has also worked as a fixed income trader at Barclays Investment Bank, London. He attended the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad and is a computer science engineer from IIT Delhi. He is passionate about running, music and automobiles.
About Skydo
Skydo is a Fintech Startup on a mission to make cross-border B2B payments hassle-free & reduce forex charges for businesses by more than 50%. Founded in Feb 2022 by Movin Jain and Srivatsan Sridhar, with a combined experience of over 20 years in the start-up space, Skydo’s cross-border payments platform aims to make global trade efficient for SMBs by providing solutions related to Compliance, Cost and Convenience.
The Bangalore based fintech helps companies especially Indian service providers create a global virtual account that can be put to use immediately – within 5 minutes! By partnering with leading banks across the globe, it provides businesses with their own foreign virtual accounts for receiving payments – without any taxation or compliance burdens. Skydo converts the money at live Fx rate with ZERO markup & charge a flat fee for every transaction.
It offers a seamless way to ‘get paid locally’ from overseas clients which is convenient, fast and cost-efficient. The company has raised USD 5.2 million in a seed round led by Elevation Capital. Skydo is headquartered in the US (Delaware) with subsidiaries in the US, Singapore and India.
