# How Dodo Payments helped Indilingo scale a language app to 90+ countries > Built for Indian languages, loved globally, Indilingo needed a payment system that could keep up. - **Company**: Indilingo - **Industry**: EdTech - **Payment provider**: Dodo Payments (Merchant of Record) - **Published**: 2025-05-20 - **URL**: https://dodopayments.com/case-studies/indilingo ## Key Metrics - **90+** -- Countries collecting payments globally - **1 Night** -- From sign-up to first live payment - **#1** -- Paying market unlocked in India after UPI went live --- ## The Company **Indilingo: learning Indian languages from your own language** Indilingo started with a simple frustration. Jay wanted to learn Kannada while living in Bangalore, but the apps available were shallow, English-first, and stopped long before users could actually speak the language confidently. The gap was bigger than just Kannada. While global languages had dozens of polished learning apps, Indian languages had very few, and almost none designed for users learning from their native language instead of English. Indilingo was built to change that. The platform helps users learn Indian languages like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Sanskrit through interactive lessons and real-time AI-powered speaking practice. What began as a side project quickly grew into a global product. After launching publicly, the app gained traction through community-driven growth, including a viral Reddit post in the Sanskrit community that became one of the subreddit's top posts ever. Today, Indilingo has users across **90+ countries**, with growing demand from India, the US, UK, Singapore, France, and beyond. ## The Challenge **Global demand, but no way to collect global payments** When Indilingo began monetising, the assumption was that most paying users would come from India. The opposite happened. Before UPI support was enabled, a large share of paying users came from outside India, including customers in the US, UK, France, Singapore, and Denmark. That exposed a major infrastructure problem. Razorpay, the most obvious option for an India-based founder, only supported payments from Indian customers. Stripe wasn't available. Other alternatives lacked the mix of global support, recurring billing, and UPI integration Indilingo needed. > "We had interest from people outside India. We knew Razorpay would not work because it only accepted payments from Indian customers." > > -- Jay, Co-Founder, Indilingo Users were actively asking to pay. One user from France even reached out asking why the app was still free. But without a payment system built for international customers, Indilingo had no reliable way to monetise the demand it had already created. At the same time, global growth introduced another challenge: tax and compliance. With users across dozens of countries, managing international tax obligations manually wasn't realistic for a small team focused on building product. ## The Solution **A payment system built for both India and the world** Jay had already heard about Dodo Payments through the startup community and Twitter conversations around global payments for Indian founders. When the time came to evaluate options seriously, Dodo stood out as the only platform that solved both sides of the problem: international payments and Indian payment methods. As a Merchant of Record, Dodo handles: - Global payments across 220+ countries - UPI support for Indian users - Tax collection and remittance automatically - Recurring subscriptions and billing infrastructure - Self-service subscription management - Reliable webhooks and developer-friendly APIs This meant Indilingo could support users globally while still delivering a localised checkout experience for India. > "By the time I was done with my code, I only had to wait for a few hours to get the approvals. And then we actually started the first test payment in one night." > > -- Jay, Co-Founder, Indilingo The setup moved quickly. Jay submitted documents while building the integration in parallel and by the time the implementation was done, approvals had already come through. > "We processed the first test payment in one night." > > -- Jay, Co-Founder, Indilingo ## The Implementation **Integrated once, and rarely touched again** The integration was straightforward from the beginning. Subscription logic, webhooks, and recurring billing were implemented quickly, and the checkout experience worked reliably from the first version. What stood out most over time was stability. Months later, Indilingo went through a major backend migration from Flask to FastAPI, a significant architectural change across the product. The payment layer required virtually no changes. > "I have not touched the code related to my webhooks or most of my payment stuff since probably the first version that we implemented. That's what I like about Dodo -- you don't have to manually change anything. Stuff works the way it is supposed to." > > -- Jay, Co-Founder, Indilingo Dodo's APIs and webhook infrastructure continued working seamlessly throughout the migration, allowing the team to focus entirely on rebuilding the core platform instead of revisiting payments. As new features rolled out, the impact became even more visible. When UPI support went live, Indian users who previously struggled with international card payments could finally pay in INR using familiar flows. Adoption was immediate, and India quickly became Indilingo's largest paying market. Support from the Dodo team also extended beyond documentation and dashboards. When Jay needed help understanding tax reporting and payment data, Dodo's founders worked directly with him and his CA to walk through the process, helping a small product team handle global payments without adding operational overhead. ## The Results **From a local idea to a global subscription business** Dodo Payments didn't just help Indilingo monetise, it enabled the product to operate globally from day one. ### Users across 90+ countries Indilingo now has users in more than 90 countries, with paying customers across markets including the US, UK, Singapore, France, Malaysia, and Denmark. Without global payment support, many of those users would never have been able to subscribe. ### India became the #1 paying market after UPI Before UPI support, most paying users came from outside India. Once UPI launched, adoption from Indian users accelerated quickly. India is now Indilingo's largest paying market, transforming the product from globally accessible to truly localised. ### Tax and compliance -- fully handled Managing payments across multiple countries would normally create significant operational and compliance overhead. With Dodo operating as Merchant of Record, tax collection and remittance across jurisdictions is handled automatically, allowing the team to stay focused on product instead of regulations. ### Payment infrastructure that scales quietly Even during a full backend migration, the payment layer remained stable. Recurring billing, subscriptions, and webhook systems continued running without requiring rework, giving the team confidence that the infrastructure could scale alongside the product. > "Dodo lets me focus on building the actual product instead of worrying about payments." > > -- Jay, Co-Founder, Indilingo --- ## About Dodo Payments Dodo Payments is the billing and payments platform for AI-first companies. As a Merchant of Record, Dodo handles tax collection, compliance, billing, and payouts across 220+ countries so founders can focus on building. Features include credit-based billing, usage metering, subscriptions, one-time payments, adaptive currency pricing, 40+ local payment methods, and built-in analytics. - [Learn more about Dodo Payments](https://dodopayments.com) - [All case studies](https://dodopayments.com/case-studies) - [Pricing](https://dodopayments.com/pricing) - [Sign up](https://app.dodopayments.com/login)