There’s a particular kind of frustration that every Indian traveller knows too well. You find a great flight deal, get excited about a trip abroad, and then reality hits — the visa process. Piles of documents, confusing embassy websites, anxious weeks of waiting, and the ever-present fear of rejection. For most people, it’s the single biggest reason international travel feels like a privilege, not a right.
Mohak Nahta felt that frustration firsthand. While working as an engineer at Pinterest in San Francisco, he was the only Indian on his team during a five-country work trip. His American colleagues booked flights and packed bags. He spent weeks scrambling for visas — submitting the same documents to different embassies over and over again. It was the same information, the same purpose, and yet the process seemed designed to exhaust you. That experience stuck with him. In 2020, he left one of the world’s most iconic tech companies to fix a problem nobody else seemed to be taking seriously enough.
The result was Atlys — a digital visa platform that promises to do for visas what fintech did for banking: make it fast, transparent, and actually bearable. And now, the startup has just raised $36 million in fresh funding to push that mission onto a truly global stage.
Key Highlights
- $36 million raised in the latest funding round, with investors including Susquehanna International Group (SIG), MakeMyTrip, Belgian firm Sofina, and existing backers Peak XV Partners and Elevation Capital
- Total funding now crosses $73 million since inception in 2020
- 150+ countries covered on the Atlys platform, with visa processing as fast as 55 seconds
- Over 2 million visas processed to date with a reported 99%+ on-time delivery rate
- AI-powered tools being built to evaluate visa approval chances, cut rejection rates, and personalise the application experience
- Global markets including the US, UAE, and UK already active; Middle East next in focus
- Platform operates in both B2B and B2C segments, serving individual travellers and travel agents alike
- Atlys acquired UK-based Artionis in February 2025, establishing a foothold in London, Manchester, and Edinburgh
The Story Behind the Startup
The origin story of Atlys is one of those rare ones that explains exactly why the product needed to exist.
When Nahta was preparing for that work trip at Pinterest, he would show up to the office to find his teammates casually planning museum visits while he was buried under paperwork for his third visa application of the week. It wasn’t just annoying — it felt deeply unfair. The same destinations, the same professional trip, but two entirely different experiences depending on the colour of your passport.
Back then, there was no real digital solution for the problem. There were agents who charged steep fees, government websites that crashed on a Tuesday afternoon, and absolutely no way to know in advance if your application would sail through or get stuck in some embassy backroom for weeks.
Nahta’s early tactics for building Atlys were, to put it gently, unconventional. He reportedly once walked the terminals of San Francisco International Airport wearing a T-shirt that said “Got Questions on Turkey e-Visa?” — helping confused travellers navigate sudden rule changes until airport security eventually had him escorted out. If that story doesn’t tell you everything about a founder’s conviction in their product, nothing will.
What started as a side project shared with friends quietly became a word-of-mouth phenomenon. Within six months of its formal India launch, Atlys had become the country’s largest visa processor by volume — a remarkable milestone for a startup competing against legacy players, travel agents, and a public that had largely accepted the visa process as something you just had to suffer through.
What This Round is Really About
The $36 million raised in this latest round isn’t just a validation of what Atlys has already built — it signals where the company intends to go next. The participation of MakeMyTrip, India’s most dominant online travel platform, is particularly telling. It suggests the travel industry itself is beginning to see visa processing not as a peripheral service but as a core part of the travel journey.
Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Belgian investment firm Sofina, alongside existing backers Peak XV Partners and Elevation Capital, round out a syndicate that brings both capital muscle and strategic relationships to the table.
For Atlys, this money goes toward three things: aggressive global expansion, deepening its AI capabilities, and building the kind of product depth that turns a useful tool into an indispensable one.
AI Is the Next Frontier
Atlys has already introduced an AI-powered visa evaluator that tells applicants their estimated approval chances before they even submit a form. This alone changes the psychology of the process. Instead of submitting blindly and praying, travellers can understand their risk profile, strengthen weak parts of their application, and approach embassies with confidence rather than anxiety.
But the company’s ambitions for AI go further. With over two million visa applications processed — each carrying rich, anonymised data on document quality, embassy patterns, approval timelines, and rejection causes — Atlys has built what may be one of the most valuable proprietary datasets in the global travel space. The plan is to use that intelligence to make every application smarter, faster, and more likely to succeed.
The international travel market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.5% over the next decade. Global outbound tourists numbered 1.3 billion in 2023 alone. India’s contribution to that number is growing rapidly — 30 million Indians travelled internationally in 2023, a 20% jump year-on-year, with a significant chunk of that growth coming from Tier-II and Tier-III cities rather than just metros. These aren’t power travellers booking business class. These are aspirational, first-time or second-time passport holders who need someone to hold their hand through a process that was never designed to be welcoming.
That is precisely Atlys’ core audience, and it’s an audience that’s only getting bigger.
From India to the World
The UK expansion earlier in 2025 — backed by the acquisition of visa services firm Artionis — was a sharp strategic move. Artionis brought with it 40 specialists across London, Manchester, and Edinburgh, and deep expertise in specialised visa categories that digital-first platforms often struggle to handle. Atlys plans to double that UK headcount by the end of the year, indicating that this isn’t a soft market entry — it’s a serious play for one of the world’s most complex and high-demand visa markets.
The UAE expansion has similarly been a success. With nearly 90% of the UAE’s population made up of expatriates, the demand for seamless cross-border mobility is essentially baked into the market’s DNA. Atlys has found strong traction there, and the Middle East is reportedly next in line for deeper investment.
For a company that was born out of one man’s airport frustration and built on the belief that visa anxiety is a solvable problem, the journey has been remarkable. What started with seed money from Andreessen Horowitz in 2021 has now grown into a funded, globally operating platform with a clear shot at becoming the default infrastructure layer for international travel.
The biggest question now is no longer whether Atlys can process visas faster than the competition. It already can. The question is whether it can build enough depth — in AI, in partnerships, in market coverage — to become the platform that travels with you, long before you even book your flight.
Given the founder’s tendency to wear campaign T-shirts in airport terminals, one suspects he’s not planning to slow down anytime soon.
Atlys is headquartered in San Francisco and operates across India, UAE, UK, and multiple global markets. The platform processes visa applications for 150+ destinations with reported on-time delivery rates of over 99%.
