About Ayda
Ayda helps research professionals and organisations to manage ResOps tasks more efficiently
Providing value to research professionals and participants
Ayda enables companies to streamline time-consuming Research Operations tasks, saving them up to 60 days a year that can be spent focusing on discovering insights and running their businesses.
Our customers love how Ayda streamlines and automates internal workflows. They trust Ayda to handle ResOps tasks including incentive payments, participant communications and agreements, and holding data in a PII- and GDPR-compliant way. This releases researchers from the burden of juggling emails and spreadsheets while also worrying about regulatory compliance; finance teams are released from the burden of disbursing payments; and everyone benefits from having fewer time-consuming ResOps tasks on their to-do lists.
Simultaneously, our customers can offer a superior experience to research participants, who love the speed and efficiency of communications via Ayda, as well as receiving payment in real-time, directly in their bank accounts.
The Ayda story
In 2020, whilst running her research consultancy, Shifra Cook saw the outdated and inefficient way research participants were paid. Paying incentives was anything from bank withdrawals and brown envelopes filled with cash to sending physical vouchers or gift cards, to hours’ worth of payments being made by finance teams. Bank details are even scribbled down on post-its or sent via email!
And it was a bad experience for participants – unwanted vouchers or wondering when, if ever, they’d receive payment – and a time-consuming task fraught with risk that really cut into what the business had been hired to do: deliver high-quality insights.
In 2021, Shifra - an experienced entrepreneur, former researcher, and strategist – founded Ayda. She aimed to significantly reduce the administrative inefficiencies often involved when conducting research by delivering a platform that automated these tasks.
Ayda has grown quickly, with early customers including Firefish, Thinks Insight, and Kokoro/ Zest Fieldwork. The platform now enables customers to hold GBP, EUR, and USD wallets with the ability to make direct-to-bank payments to 52 countries, as well as offering 500+ popular vouchers.
We are proudly supported by a small network of angel investors.
Meet our team
Founder and CEO Shifra Cook leads the Ayda team, which includes talented experts with backgrounds in market research, finance, technology, product development, marketing and customer success.
Shifra Cook
Founder & CEO
Ben Leet
Chief Finance & Operations Officer
Paul Bullivant
Chief Technology Officer
Letycia Bialle
Customer Success Manager
Damian Stephens
UX Consultant
Julia Bastos
Digital Marketing Manager