“We’re definitely in expansion mode now,” Velivela said. “It’s no longer just about the United States, but we are actively looking at international markets and to do that we want a global talent pool.”
Velivela said the company was looking to tap Indian talent in areas such as engineering, business, risk and financial operations.
Founded in 2019, AtoB sees a major opportunity in payments modernization for the $1 trillion commercial fuel and transportation sector, particularly trucking. It brings together not only truckers and small businesses, but also big banks and oil and gas companies, creating a digital infrastructure to bring them together, Velivela said.
The company has so far raised over $200 million from General Catalyst, Elad Gil, Bloomberg Beta, Y Combinator, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, among others.
AtoB’s operations are currently primarily limited to the United States, although it is looking to expand into Europe and Southeast Asia.
Velivela said India is likely to become an important market in three to five years for the company, as its trucking sector becomes more digitalized.
“We more than doubled last year and plan to double or triple again,” Velivela said, without revealing its revenue figures.
AtoB’s products include a fuel card used by commercial trucking operators, a payroll product to pay drivers, and B2B bill payment options.
Fintechs have big opportunities with artificial intelligence, Velivela said, highlighting areas such as real-time transaction processing and financial risk modeling where the company is leveraging AI/ML.
“The next generation will live in a world of abundant intelligence,” he said, adding that the scale of the impact of the AI revolution will be comparable to the discovery of fire, much greater than the The advent of the Internet or personal computing.
It will also likely result in some level of displacement, he noted.
Regarding the raging debate over the H-1B visa in the United States, Velivela, who works in the United States on an O-1 visa granted to those with “extraordinary abilities,” said: “There is certainly some degree of expediency in this discussion due to the change in government, but I think the ecosystem for foreigners is very healthy in the United States.
He emphasized that skilled immigration represents a small share of immigration to the United States and that there can be a balance of attracting sufficient numbers of immigrants without disrupting the social fabric.
Velivela said country limits on certain visas — such as for the EB-5 visa program — are “irrelevant these days, because the talent is truly global.”
