Who is Atoa?
Atoa is at the forefront of a global shift in payments, using open banking to offer merchants a reliable and cost effective alternative to debit cards and bank transfers in the form of payment made directly from customers’ bank accounts via a QR code or SMS payment link.
The Challenge: A Balancing Act
The Atoa founders firstly wanted to achieve the right balance across their UK and Indian teams, to ensure the highest quality output, in a capital efficient way.
The team was also aware of the need to engage with the major payments companies in India to help shape the product design.
The Solution: UK-India Team Powers Atoa’s Growth Story
Leo co-founder Shwetank Verma consulted extensively with Sid and Cian on their UK-India talent strategy, with a focus on hiring and related compliance processes in India.
In parallel, the Leo team facilitated engagement with relevant payment leaders in India, allowing the Atoa team to make considerable progress in the evolution of customer and product flow design considerations using learnings from the Asian payment apps.
Shwetank also counselled the team on scaling issues such as merchant onboarding, retention, cashback strategy and fraud management.
The Results
Three quarters of the 70 member Atoa team is now based in their Bengaluru office. This world class, capital efficient talent engine has allowed Atoa to increase GMV by 30 times within 2 years of founding.
In addition, Leo’s support in areas such as product flows, merchant onboarding and compliance helped Atoa to secure a $6.5M seed round within 12 months of their first institutional round.
“Leo Capital has been behind us since day one, while their networks and experience in both India and the UK has played a massive role in our strategy of capital-efficient scaling. The team at Leo understand Founders and have given us both the support, and the space needed to sustainably grow our business.”
