Cross-Border Payments Platform Skydo Raises $10Mn led by Susquehanna Asia VC to Power India’s USD 2Tn Export Ambition

Skydo founders Srivatsan Sridhar and Movin Jain

Skydo, India’s leading cross-border payments platform for exporters, has raised USD 10 million in Series A funding led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, with participation from existing investor Elevation Capital.

The Bengaluru-based company serves over 30,000 Indian MSMEs, freelancers, and startups across 50+ cities, processing payments in 32+ currencies. Skydo was among the first to receive the Reserve Bank of India's In-Principle authorisation as a Payment Aggregator - Cross Border (PA-CB).

Rapidly Growing Exports, Broken Payments

India aspires to export services and goods worth USD 2 trillion by FY30, fuelled by hundreds of thousands of ambitious MSMEs, freelancers and startups. Yet, these exporters often lose 3-7% of their revenue to hidden forex mark-ups and opaque fees. Client payments take days, while subsequent documentation and compliance can extend into weeks and months.

Skydo is building the financial Operating System for Indian exporters - Skydo customers can collect payments locally from clients across countries. These payments are then processed at zero forex fees, transparent flat-fee pricing and 24-hour settlement. The platform instantly generates compliance documents like FIRA, and provides a full suite of accounts receivable tools like invoicing, payment reminders and accounting integration.

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 of 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.

Until now, the only options for an Indian MSME exporter to receive payments have been traditional banks or global platforms like PayPal, Wise or Payoneer. Banks charge opaque fees and have lengthy, manual processes for compliance, while global platforms deduct up to 10% of invoice values as fees, and aren’t natively built for Indian exporters’ needs.

“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.

“I started using Skydo shortly after their launch, and I’ve been a fan ever since. Skydo saved me from haggling with banks on FX rates every time I received a payment, and we’ve saved thousands of hard-earned dollars since switching,” said Abhishek Agarwalla, Co-founder and CEO of AI interviewing company Fabric.

“What really stands out, though, is how customer-obsessed they are. I still remember the entire Skydo team, including Movin and Srivatsan, showing up at our office to listen to our problems firsthand. Most products make money, but Skydo has earned something far rarer: customer trust."

Scaling to USD 5Bn and Beyond

Skydo grew 4X in the past year, and is targeting USD 5 billion in annualized payment volume within 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 of Skydo . “With this round, we aim to expand our global footprint and secure payment licences in key geographies.”

According to Bhavanipratap Rana, Investment Advisor to Susquehanna Asia VC, “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. 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.”

Talking about the investment, Mridul Arora, Partner, Elevation Capital said, "Since partnering with Skydo at their inception, we have been incredibly impressed by the team’s speed, execution, and unwavering product focus. 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 This Round Unlocks

The new capital will unlock:

• Geographic expansion: Local collections across 20+ countries in Latin America, Africa, South East Asia and the Middle East
• Global licensing: regulatory licenses in key international markets
• Card infrastructure: Scaling InstaLinks to enable card acceptance for more exporters at half the cost of legacy gateways
• Deeper compliance suite: Enhanced reconciliation and reporting tools to reduce back-office overhead
• Developer platform: APIs and webhooks for SaaS companies, marketplaces, and fintechs to embed Skydo's global payment rails

Snabbit, India’s First Quick-Service App, raises $5.5 Million from Elevation Capital and Nexus Venture Partners

Snabbit, a Quick-Service App providing on-demand home services, has raised $5.5 million in a Series A round of funding, led by Elevation Capital, with participation from Nexus Venture Partners. The round also saw participation from prominent angels including Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, Gaurav Munjal and Niraj Singh. This round follows an earlier $1 million seed investment by Nexus Venture Partners in early 2024.

Snabbit is on a mission to simplify urban living by connecting households with trusted and trained experts for everyday home tasks, available on-demand. These professionals can be booked by the hour and arrive within 15 minutes, equipped to handle multiple tasks such as general cleaning, dishwashing, and laundry. Snabbit provides a quick, reliable, and high-quality solution to a common challenge faced by countless Indian households.

Snabbit was Founded in 2024 by Aayush Agarwal who previously served as Chief of Staff at Zepto, driving their fundraising efforts and leading strategic projects at the Quick-Commerce startup. Already active across select locations in Mumbai, the funding will be used to expand to more locations and build a strong team.

"India is an incredible market with immense untapped potential for high-frequency home services," said Aayush Agarwal, Founder & CEO of Snabbit. "Over the past few months, we’ve been extremely focused on understanding customer pain points and building a model that is not only scalable but truly game-changing. The response so far has been highly encouraging—we’ve acquired thousands of customers within just a few kilometers of serviceable radius, driven primarily by strong word-of-mouth. This is just the beginning of what we see as a massive opportunity. We’re not merely building a business; we’re leading the creation of a new category poised for significant innovation and growth in the years to come," he added.

Talking about the investment, Manish Advani, Vice President, Elevation Capital, said:

Snabbit's platform which provides quick, on-demand and affordable home services through a hyperlocal network of professionals is a game-changer. Leveraging a unique model to deliver reliable and high-quality services swiftly, they stand out in the home services sector. We are excited to partner with them on this journey as they grow from select micro markets in Mumbai to pan-India, transforming everyday convenience.

Suvir Sujan, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners, mentioned, “Snabbit is disrupting the home services industry at the hyperlocal level. We have been impressed by the vision and execution of the team.”

With a hyperlocal network operating in dense residential clusters, Snabbit has launched a unique business model that focuses on quality as well as speed. By adopting a full-stack approach to sourcing, training, and managing its experts, Snabbit ensures stable income and essential benefits like health and accident insurance for its supply cohort, thus empowering a workforce that has long been fragmented and unorganized. Snabbit’s dual focus on customer convenience and welfare for its experts creates a win-win ecosystem, redefining the on-demand home services industry.

Founded in 2024 by Aayush Agarwal, Snabbit is India’s first Quick-Service App offering on-demand home services. With a hyperlocal network operating in dense residential clusters, Snabbit guarantees quality and speed, providing trusted and trained experts that arrive within minutes. Backed by Nexus Venture Partners and Elevation Capital, Snabbit takes a full-stack approach to sourcing, training, and managing experts. Combined with an innovative time-based pricing model, Snabbit simplifies daily life for urban families while creating respectable, well-paying opportunities for a workforce that has long been fragmented and unorganized.

India Fintech A $400 Bn Value Creation Opportunity by 2030, Says The Bottomline Report by Elevation Capital

Elevation Capital, India’s leading early-stage venture capital firm, today unveiled its in-depth report on the Indian Fintech sector, titled ‘The Bottomline: Elevation Fintech Report 2023’, with the support of ‘McKinsey & Company’ as the knowledge partner. India’s fintech ecosystem, the third-largest globally, is expected to reach a scale of ~$70Bn in annual revenue by FY30, accounting for 18-20% of the addressable financial services revenue pool. The report presents Elevation’s 4Es framework — Expansion, Experience, Efficiency, and Enablement — dimensions across which fintechs have created value, and provides a macro view of fintechs in India, encapsulating their journey so far and their impact on the financial services ecosystem. The report can be viewed and accessed at bottomline.elevationcapital.com.

The report serves as a blueprint for $400Bn of value creation set to happen in the fintech sector by 2030 (4X growth from today). The report captures Elevation’s deep thesis on the fintech sector, insights from a comprehensive survey of 70+ industry experts and conversations with 20+ industry leaders from prominent fintechs and financial services, which includes Ajay Rajan (Head of Digital and Transaction Banking, Yes Bank), Anup agarwal (Co-founder & CEO, Mintifi), Anurag Sinha (Co-founder, Onecard), Archit Gupta (Founder & CEO, Clear), Asish Mohapatra (Co-founder & CEO, OfBusiness), Atulya Bhat (Co-founder, Jodo), Hrushikesh Mehta (Senior Vice President - Financial Services, ONDC), Madhusudanan R (Co-founder, M2P Fintech), Nitin Chugh (Deputy Managing Director and Head of Digital Banking, State Bank of India), Nitin Gupta (Founder & CEO, Uni Cards), Sameer Shetty (Head, Digital Business And Transformation, Axis Bank), Sandeep Jathwani (Co-founder, Deserv) Sashank Rishyasringa (Co-founder, axio), Srivatsan Sridhar (Founder & CEO, Skydo), Varun Dua (CEO, Acko), Vamsi Madhav (Deputy Managing Director and Head of Digital Banking, COO & Founding member, Sahamati), Vijay Shekar Sharma (CEO, Paytm) among others.

84% of survey respondents expect fintechs to play a significant or dominant role going forward, with SME Lending, Retail Lending, Fintech SaaS and Wealth (advisory & brokerage) being categories that will see the most fintech growth and innovation, according to the respondents. However, industry participants believe that for continued growth, fintechs will need to overcome a few challenges, such as achieving sustainable profitability, ensuring a regulatory-compliant business model, and adhering to risk and security standards.

The report comes at a time when India’s fintech ecosystem is at an inflection point, showcasing immense headroom for growth relative to its global counterparts. As a precursor to the next phase of the report, Elevation offers a glimpse into the ‘10 Key Themes’ that will shape the future of fintech value creation in India and the key elements to build an enduring & profitable fintech franchise.

Mridul Arora, Partner, Elevation Capital, said, “India is today setting the template for the rest of the world with its innovative models in fintech and financial services. Our fast-growing digital population, world-class Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), and proactive regulators are three key tailwinds underpinning the fintech growth, which will expand into a $400Bn opportunity by 2030.”

“Fintechs have emerged as significant players, making meaningful headways into key categories and capturing a sizable market share of 3-5% of India’s very large and growing financial services revenue pools. They are creating and will continue to create value across the 4Es of Expansion, Efficiency, Experience, and Enablement. Over the next decade, we expect this value creation to accelerate, catalyzed by India’s Digital Public Infra, allowing fintechs to capture 12-15% of the financial services revenue pool by 2030," said Vaas Bhaskar, Principal, Elevation Capital.

Key findings from the report

• With more than 9K+ fintechs, India is home to 3rd highest number of fintechs globally
• Fintech funding in India has tripled in 2022 since 2018
• Fintech is now capturing ~14% share of India’s startup funding
• Fintechs are capturing a meaningful market share across key financial service categories
• ~70% of digital payment transactions are captured by fintechs, with the share of fintechs increasing ~2.3X in FY22 from FY19
• ~50% of active broking accounts on NSE are held by fintechs - again, the share of fintechs has grown ~4x from FY19 to FY22
• Share of insurtechs, specifically in sectors such as motor insurance, have grown ~5x since FY19 to FY22 & fintechs are capturing ~5% of the share of gross written premium underwritten. This share is expected to increase significantly over the next decade
• Amidst the perfect storm of disruption in India’s Financial Services landscape, Fintechs have emerged to play a significant role:
• They have captured material share in key categories (e.g. payment gateways, small ticket personal loans, BNPL lending) and rapidly growing share in others (card issuing, wealth & insurance distribution) and, as a result, already drive 3-5% of India’s financial services revenue pools
• From a qualitative standpoint, fintechs have created value across 4Es -
• Expanded access, introducing millions of consumers to digital FS
• Set the bar on Experience - giving customers a world-class experience
• Defined the Efficiency paradigm - improved turnaround times for opening accounts, credit decisions, improved operating costs with the use of tech
• More broadly, Enabled the modernization of India’s financial services - by developing new & improved tech stacks.
• Multiple tailwinds have underpinned fintech growth.
• Fast-growing digital population: 200M+ users digitally transact via smartphones
• Rapid digital banking penetration: From 2018 to 2021, digital banking penetration has grown 3X in India. 
• World-class public infrastructure: The emergence of infrastructure such as Aadhar, Digilocker, UPI, GST, Account Aggregator, and large open networks such as ONDC and Agri stack are enabling fintechs
• 99% of the population has digital IDs via Aadhar
• 300M monthly eKYC transactions
• UPI has grown to >8B transactions per month
• 100M+ bills are paid via BBPS monthly
• 2M account aggregator consent requests processed per month
• Enabling regulatory environment: Increased engagement between fintechs & regulators
• Across categories, Fintech's role will be nuanced – varying between that of a shaper, attacker and catalyst
• Shaper: Set the paradigm & lead in market share - in sectors such as consumer payments, B2B SaaS point solutions, digital brokerage
• Attacker: Challenge incumbent market share - in sectors such as credit cards, motor insurance, core B2B SaaS platforms
• Catalyst: Creating and expanding new FS categories - in sectors such as business insurance, cross-border payments

About Elevation Capital

Elevation Capital is a leading venture capital firm that provides seed and early-stage capital for emerging companies in India. Elevation Capital has been investing in India since 2002, deploying almost $2 billion of capital in over 150 companies. The firm announced its eighth pool of capital of $670 million in April 2022. The firm is led by Co-Managing Partners Ravi Adusumalli and Mukul Arora, along with Partners Mridul Arora and Mayank Khanduja. The firm has invested in over 150 companies across Consumer Internet, SaaS, Fintech, Consumer Brands, Edtech, Healthtech and Web3/Crypto and has offices in Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Salt Lake City.

Mesa School of Business Launches India's 1st Startup-focused B-School, Raises INR 34 Cr from Elevation Capital, Other Prominent Angels

• Mesa School of business is India’s first B-school programme aimed at transforming young professionals by preparing them for the challenges of leadership roles in Indian startups
• With access to founders, and seasoned startup practitioners as mentors, the students will be encouraged to learn about running and scaling startups by building their own startup businesses as part of coursework
• The school has designed a unique learning system with a heavy focus on learning-by-doing, industry exposure and 1:1 industry mentorship
• Applications for the first inaugural cohort are live now. 

With an aim to build India’s first business school focused on creating Startup Leaders, Mesa School of Business has raised INR 34 Crores from Elevation Capital and notable angel investors such as Kunal Shah (Cred), Vidit Aatrey (Meesho), Abhiraj Bahl, and others who continue to join each week.

With the help of these funds, Ankit Agarwal and Varun Limaye (alumni of Harvard, Kellogg, Urban Company and Amazon) aim to build a cutting-edge, hands-on, and application-based curriculum, designed and delivered in partnership with startup leaders and potential future employers for a founding cohort of just 60 hand-picked students.

Founders Varun Limaye (Kellogg, ex Amazon) and Ankit Agarwal (Harvard, ex-Urban Company) aim to create India's first B school focused on creating Startup Leaders of tomorrow

This comes in contrast to traditional MBAs that focus on teaching theoretical topics and focus on equipping their students for careers in Consulting and other similar traditional roles and industries. The founders are leveraging their deep industry networks to design a unique learning system with a heavy focus on learning-by-doing, industry exposure and 1:1 industry mentorship. This will be a 12 months, full time PG program in Startup Leadership, based out of Bangalore. At the end of the program, students will get access to opportunities for leadership roles at top startups and technology companies in the country.

Following up on the fund announcement, In a joint statement, the founding team of Mesa School of Business said, “We believe startups will be responsible for creating the bulk of the new aspirational jobs in India, and yet there isn’t a b-school focused on preparing candidates to be successful in these leadership roles. This gap inspired us to start Mesa School. We have kept ‘learning by doing’ as the core principle of the program where every candidate will get to learn business directly from startup CXOs and practitioners, build startup businesses from scratch as part of coursework and deeply immerse themselves into Bangalore’s startup ecosystem. We have kept our inaugural cohort small at only 60 exceptional students to keep the experience personal, deliver an unparalleled learning experience and ensure strong outcomes for our students.”

The program will also focus on individual leadership growth for students with 200+ hours of leadership workshops with army veterans, communication & stage presence hackathons with coaches & theatre artists and 1:1 industry mentorship. For example, Lt General V K Mishra (AVSM, PVSM, Commandant Indian Military Academy), has been invited to share “Leadership Lessons from the Field” with the founding cohort of students.

The campus is strategically located in Bangalore with 500+ startup offices within a 5 km radius, providing unprecedented access for students to the startup ecosystem and its prominent leaders. Additionally, the campus will offer a state-of-the-art, immersive learning and living space for students to build lifelong peer and industry connections through 20+ boot camps & hackathons to learn, get feedback from and network with top startup CEOs in new-age industries and skill areas like EV, B2B SAAS, Open-AI applications, Design Thinking & UI/UX for leaders, Product & Growth Hacking, Agritech, Building for Bharat, etc.

Commenting on the announcement, Mukul Arora, Managing Partner, Elevation Capital, said, “We believe there is a clear opportunity to build new age, outcome-focused higher-ed institutes in India. Therefore we could immediately relate to Ankit and Varun's vision of building a business school of the future, focussed on entrepreneurship and the start-up ecosystem. Their long term orientation, and their focus on creating very high quality experience and outcome for students really stood out for us. We are thrilled to partner with them on this journey to create an iconic Indian higher-ed institution."

Seasoned startup founders, practitioners and senior leaders have been involved in designing the curriculum and program, out of which many have agreed to come onboard as faculty and mentors. Some key names include Aditya Shrivastava (SVP, Urban Company - “Operating at scale in India”), Himesh Joshi (Founder - Ayu Health, GoZefo, “Build for Healthcare in Middle India”), Mukul Arora (Managing Partner, Elevation Capital - “How to evaluate startup opportunities”), Saurabh Jain (Founder StableMoney, ex-Navi - “Build Fintech business in India”), Suhail Vadgaokar (Head of People, Deserve - “How to build culture & teams in a high growth startup”), Madhura Kale (Principal Product Manager - Amazon - “Product Management in Big Tech”), Rahool Gadkari (Co-Founder - Neufin, Kellogg - “Business of Climate Tech in India”), Neha Bareja (Brand Meesho, “New age marketing for Indian consumers”), among many others.

The Mesa School of Business program promises to give better return on investment (ROI) for working professionals over traditional 2-year MBAs. The founding cohort for the one-year PG program in Startup Leadership is set to commence in September this year. The course fee is INR 14.95 lac for a full year, and residential facilities are available upon request. There will be significant scholarship support offered to the founding cohort to remove all financial hindrances and build a truly diverse group of exceptional student peers, like women leaders, entrepreneurs and ex-armed forces/athletes/creative artists, and more.

To ensure that the student peer group is of exceptional quality, the founding cohort is being kept very exclusive and limited to only 60 students. First application deadline is on 28-May 2023. More than 300+ applications have already been submitted with founders expecting final numbers to be more than 1000. Final selection will be very exclusive and kept at less than 5% of all applicants.

For more information on Mesa School of Business, the PGP in Startup Leadership, and the application process, visit their website: https://mesaschool.co/

Enterprise-class OKR Platform Profit.co Raises $11 Mn Funding Led by Elevation Capital

• Enterprise-class OKR platform Profit.co today announced $11Mn in their first institutional funding led by Elevation Capital. as it continues to help enterprises drive successful business outcomes
• The latest round of funding will be used to scale up the Sales and Customer Success teams in N America, EMEA & APAC

The bridge between a business strategy and successful execution is something that all businesses are focussed on. Yet 60% stumble on this path (according to Gartner) because of gaps in their ability to execute. To support businesses on their journey, Profit.co which is laser focussed on Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) metrics is announcing a $11M funding round to grow their team and product around the world. The funding round was led by Elevation Capital.

Founded by Bastin Gerald in 2018, Profit.co is a platform that enables OKR planning, review, and execution because it’s people that drive strategies to ensure businesses steer a stable course on their successful execution. OKRs is a goal setting framework pioneered by Intel and used by organizations to define, measure, and track outcomes. Profit.co’s OKRs help teams bridge the gap between strategy and execution.

Today, companies manage their strategy delivery and execution on spreadsheets, presentation slides or at stretch by way of a project management software but these means remain disconnected with what’s happening in the engine of the business. As a business grows this approach lacks the flexibility and integration with their wider enterprise stack like Slack, Jira, Salesforce, Hubspot, Oracle and true alignment mechanisms that streamline strategic execution.

Baston Gerald

Bastin Gerald is an industry veteran with a wide spanning experience of working in startups to enterprise businesses like Oracle. Bastin Gerald, Founder and CEO of Profit.co said “Business leaders struggle to see and action cross-functional dependencies between key results, thus making leaders more reactive and restricting the success rate of the company’s priority initiatives. Profit.co seamlessly integrates individual employee success with business strategy to ensure that OKR setting is a reliable and value additive exercise for organizations.”

”The biggest concern for businesses that use suboptimal solutions to navigate the growth journey is that they don’t have an eyeline into the levers of their success, the people working on projects. OKR use is widespread and we are helping business owners capture the true essence of what is working and what needs supercharging. Our insights are not just dynamic but showcase how they trend over time and in real time”.

Akarsh Shrivastava, Principal, Elevation Capital said, “OKR as a philosophy has been appreciated across the globe and has seen strong tailwinds. The challenge though always has been with execution, with a lot of programs failing because they are not implemented well or for the want of a good product. Bastin and team with their deep experience in the space, have created an offering to bridge this gap. Profit’s deep product, coupled with the implementation muscle have forged several stories of strong impact on their customers across US, India and EMEA. What further excited us was the type of Customer NPS, scale and growth they have been able to achieve with very limited capital. We are super excited to partner with Bastin and the team.”

Profit.co provides the functionality that traditional, ad hoc solutions lack for a business to execute its strategy. It does so by not just focusing on OKR creation, but also on tracking their success and by providing real time visibility to leaders to reorient and redirect their teams as needed. Profit.co provides an enterprise-class SaaS application for companies to define,manage and execute their goals. Companies and teams can define their goals as OKRs and manage their collaborative execution through the full life cycle of OKRs. Quarterly goals (OKRs) can be broken down to daily “Tasks'' and managed through our “Task management” application. Profit.co also provides “Employee Development” and “Employee Engagement” modules to facilitate the people processes in achievement of goals.

The company has seen strong traction in recent times, having grown 9X+ in ARR over the past 2 years. It currently has thousands of customers across 25 countries, spanning sectors such as Financial Services, Telecom, Manufacturing, Consumer, Retail, Services, Not-for-Profits, technology and government organizations. Their clients include 70 Fortune 500 companies and feature marquee names such as Deckers Brands, Sandvik, Deriv, Open Government (Singapore) and Phoenix Rescue Mission among others.