Why I started Blackbird Finance

I’m Mahesh Bal, the founder and chief financial officer of Blackbird Finance. I started the company with three co-founders: Saharsh Keerthi, our CEO; Arhaan Rahil Mohammed, our CTO; and Satwik Reddy, our COO. Each of us runs one part of it. As CFO I look after the money: the company’s own, and the way the product handles yours.

This is the first post on our blog. In it I want to explain, in plain words, why Blackbird Finance exists and what it does.

Say you are a developer in India and a client in London pays you USD 4,800 for a month of work. The money arrives through your bank, PayPal, Wise, Payoneer or Skydo, and that part takes a few days. What follows is a chain of paperwork, and each link is asked for by a different part of the system:

1. 1The invoice. An export of services is zero-rated, so you charge no IGST, but only once you have filed a Letter of Undertaking (LUT) on the GST portal, and only if the invoice carries the endorsement and its value in the client’s currency.
2. 2The proof of payment. Each foreign payment should come with a FIRC or FIRA, the certificate that foreign exchange came in, matched to the invoice it pays.
3. 3The GST return. The invoice goes into GSTR-1 as an export, as a file the GST portal accepts.
4. 4The bank declaration. From 1 October 2026, every export invoice also goes on a monthly Export Declaration Form (EDF) for your bank.
5. 5The income tax. The receipts feed your income-tax estimate, and the tax on them has to be set aside before the money is spent.

None of these steps is hard on its own. The trouble is that they live in five different places, and a mistake in one tends to surface months later in another.

Until this month, software exporters filed SOFTEX forms. The RBI’s 2026 export regulations (FEMA 23(R)/2026-RB) replaced them with the Export Declaration Form. Now every exporter of services, freelancers included, hands their bank one EDF a month listing that month’s export invoices. It is due within 30 days of the month’s end, whatever the amount, and each payment still has to reach India within nine months of the invoice.

That turns an occasional chore into a monthly deadline, on top of GSTR-1. Our guide to the EDF goes through it field by field, and the due dates calendar lists every deadline, month by month.

Blackbird Finance keeps one set of records and prepares everything else from it. You raise an export invoice once, and Blackbird:

• writes it under your LUT, with no IGST and the value in the client’s currency;
• matches the FIRC or FIRA to it when the money lands;
• puts it into the GSTR-1 file, as the JSON the GST portal takes;
• adds it to that month’s EDF, as a PDF to sign or a spreadsheet for your bank’s template;
• works out the tax, including presumptive income under section 58 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (formerly 44ADA), and F&O and crypto if you trade.

It also shows what each transfer really cost you against the day’s reference rate, and chases late invoices on WhatsApp. The homepage has the full list.

Two things, on purpose. Blackbird Finance does not move money: keep whichever bank or provider you already use. And it does not file on your behalf: it prepares the GSTR-1 file and the EDF, and you upload or hand them in.

If your year needs a tax audit, or has losses to carry forward, have a CA review it. They can work from the same exports.

As a CFO, the figure I watch for any business is the one that says what it can actually spend. For a freelancer that is not the amount that landed in the bank. It is what is left once the GST and the income tax that money carries are accounted for.

So Blackbird sets tax aside as you earn and shows what is safe to spend, worked out by the same engine that prepares your returns. That one number is the reason the rest has to be right.

• Every rule is named. Each figure comes with the section or rule it rests on, so you or your CA can check it.
• Free to start. The free plan covers three invoices and one GSTR-1 export a month, with no card. The pricing page lists the rest.
• Your data stays yours. Every table is locked to your account, and you can download everything from Settings at any time.

The rules for exporters of services keep changing. The EDF is new this month, and income tax moved to the Income-tax Act, 2025 from tax year 2026-27. I will write here when something changes that affects freelancers and agencies billing abroad, and what it means in practice.

If there is a question you would like answered, write to us at info@blackbirdfinance.net. And if you want to see Blackbird Finance for yourself, it is free to start.

Who founded Blackbird Finance?

Mahesh Bal founded Blackbird Finance and is its chief financial officer. His co-founders are Saharsh Keerthi (CEO), Arhaan Rahil Mohammed (CTO) and Satwik Reddy (COO).

What does Blackbird Finance do?

It is the financial OS for Indian freelancers. It prepares export invoices under LUT, matches FIRCs to payments, and produces the GSTR-1 file, the monthly EDF and your income-tax estimate from the same records.