Peter De Caluwe of Thunes: A Cross-Border Payments Network for Emerging Markets

Rita Yang

So, in the same way you would explain to a stranger you just met in a dinner party, what does Thunes do?

Peter De Caluwe

We are basically building a network in the emerging markets, where we allow members to connect. So members can be a bank in emerging markets, can be a mobile wallet, can be a mobile money operator, can be an ATM, and a cash pickup point. Everything that touches a consumer or a business as a bank account, as we see in the Western world. So we have been building this network over the last two years. We are currently serving around 260 connections we have on the platform and the bigger the network is, the more use cases we can do with the network. For example, what we’re going to do is we’re going to develop API’s now where we allow companies to connect to our network, and then use the network, for example, payouts into mass markets. Think about you will have you will have a company wants to do payouts to millions of customers or millions of drivers. If you take the example of a Grab, for example, they can bundle it into the platform, and we will do the instant payouts.

Another use case can be, for example, we have a remittance company in the US who gets an API from us, they connect to the API, and they can instantly move money from their us customer into Kenya, for example. Another use case can be a company in Kenya who wants to pay their supplier in China as a manufacturer. So the use cases are unlimited. The product we are doing is mainly building that network of members and where we are focused on is adding new members every month. So that was something that should have been existing already to enable global trades, but I guess based on your experience, all the different payment companies in different local markets are not connected to each other. How about the banks? If you look at the Western markets, obviously, everything seems easy, but it’s the same there is highways, the restraint stations there is. So it’s what we call infrastructure. So in emerging markets, you have different levels of emerging markets. You have a country like China, you can’t compare it with an African country. Everything is different in every country. And we talk about hundreds of countries. So if you look at that, we are building that infrastructure layer. So if you take an example of an African bank who wants to transfer money to a Chinese bank, there are usually correspondent banks in between, if they have it. So, it moves. The money moves around 345 parties before it’s arrived. So its time-consuming, it’s expensive, and the more touchpoints it has, everybody takes a cut. That’s the first element. The second element, not all the emerging markets have bank coverage. Or a big bank coverage, they will have mobile money accounts.

Usually these are operated by Telecom, telco players locally, and by default, they are telco players, not banks. So, they do have a good infrastructure domestically to make payments on the ground, but they never thought about interconnecting it. I want to give the example of two great wallets that’s a third use case, it’s wallets, FinTech companies, is it easy in China to move money from Alipay to WeChat Pay. Not so easy. So it sounds weird. They’re too big companies. And consumers could be profiting and business could be profiting if you can just instantly move money around. So these are just two giants if you look at all the other countries you have 4567 wallets in, in African countries per country. You will see more coming up. You see companies like Grab going into FinTech, you see companies like suppliers going into FinTech. So, you will have more and more of these in the emerging markets and somebody has to take care to interconnect and make them all interoperable. That’s exactly what we want to do.

Hans Tung

In a case of WeChat Pay and Alipay just mentioned, to transfer money between the two accounts, I will have to make sure both accounts are connected to the same bank account and move the money from Alipay to a bank account and move money from the bank account to a WeChat account. And that’s how it will work.

Peter De Caluwe

Would it not be really cool if we’re both sitting in a restaurant and you owe me a $20 for the food we just had that you can just bump it over to me in a second.

Hans Tung

And so what exactly do you build to make that interconnectivity work?

Peter De Caluwe

So if I come back on the network that I mentioned at the beginning, we basically connect these players so we don’t do it currently for Alipay and WeChat so I can’t take an example. But we do it in Africa, for example, where we have M-Pesa, very successful mobile money account, covering almost every Kenyan. And we interconnect that one with PayPal. Many Kenyans are selling small handmade crafts on eBay so they collect funds from abroad on eBay that goes into their PayPal account. But then they can’t collect the PayPal money out into their local account. So basically, we interconnect this. We do this now for more than a year. And this goes instant. It’s like when you push the button, get my money from PayPal a second later, it arrives in their M-Pesa, account. And the opposite is also true. If you think about how the Kenyan user who wants to buy internationally on a website, but the only option they have is to go to the bank and get a credit card, which is very hard for many users, or buy with their M-Pesa, account. M-Pesa, is not accepted on that American paper. So what we do is we basically allow that user to move money instantly from M-Pesa, into PayPal and PayPal is accepted globally. So by default now, PayPal has 30 million more users theoretically in the African market. Because they can instantly transfer money from their M-Pesa,  into PayPal and then buy something on the web.

Rita Yang

Can you help us paint a picture of the dominant use case for each emerging market you serve? You just mentioned in Africa, there’s that connection between PayPal and local mobile payments. What about other markets like Southeast Asia?

Peter De Caluwe

So we obviously exist on a platform network exists over two years now. And the strength of the network is the more network members you have seen, like a public transport system, if you have two bus stops, you drive your bus from A to B, and maybe from B to A. But if you put a station C and a station D, and E, and F, etc.in the city, your network becomes bigger and you have more passengers and more use cases you can do. So for us, it’s all about developing network members. We want to grow this in the next year to more than 2,000 across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America. And then the use cases automatically follow. We see currently in effect if we add more members, the volume of transactions process goes by default because you have the network effect pumping in. Now, in Southeast Asia, what we are currently working on is for example, we have retailers from China who are selling products on marketplaces into Indonesia. So, you have a Chinese manufacturer of let’s say shoes, who sells their shoes on a website, a marketplace in Indonesia, the Indonesian buyer is an Indonesian customer who doesn’t have a credit card, who usually has cash because there’s competition here. And that cash goes into a bank account, which has Rupiah. So what we are building is that we are relaunching actually this month is that the merchant in China on the fly can create a digital bank account in Indonesia rupiah, where he can collect local currencies on so that this will allow the customer Indonesia to buy the shoes on the website of the marketplace, transfer or deposit cash into a digital bank account which belongs to the retailers in China. It’s in our name. We will then allow the retailer in China to pull rupees out, transfer it into the currency once and move it into China.

Rita Yang

What about Latin America?

Peter De Caluwe

In Latin America we are mainly the first use case, like which I mentioned, where we allow mainly US remittance companies to send money into Latin America. And we have a second customer in the US who is doing the facilitation on payouts of Airbnb. So we do the payout of the landlords in Brazil for example. If you book a host apartment in Brazil, you would pay as a customer to Airbnb. Airbnb now needs to pay out a part of that to their hosts. That money would through our customer, a partner of us, and we will move it instantly into Brazil, into the account of the landlord.

Rita Yang

In 2017 you actually entered a strategic partnership was Grab, which is also a GGV portfolio. How does that partnership come about and what does that mean for Thunes?

Peter De Caluwe

So the main challenge is, like every startup, we are a little bit opportunistic. We have our big dream that we are working on. But in our big dream, we see some opportunities where we think we can solve a problem with what we are doing. So here was a problem that basically Grab, you had a lot of fights between competition. So one of the elements were Grab could differentiate himself for itself, was basically to do payouts for the drivers on demand. So, whenever the driver wanted to get his money out of the Grab earnings, he could just say, I want it now and I want to have it there. So we developed that network of instant payouts. Whenever the driver wants his money that he earned, one time per day, two times per day, whatever he wants, he can just go in the Grab app, click a button and say I want my money and we will do the payout instantly in the destination that he wanted. So we do a pretty important job for Grab there. But it’s completely in the back, nobody will know it’s Thunes who processed it, which is great for us, we said we are focused on developing that network. But Grab has a big advantage here because they can say to their drivers, if you start driving in the morning, at noon you can already get your money. If you look at other delivery companies, for example, like food deliveries, etc, or even taxi or even Uber, they usually pay once a week or once every two weeks. And in many of the emerging markets. These people need to cash to buy fuel at noon to fill up the tank or to buy food for the family in the evening. So they have to have a requirement to get quick cash.

Hans Tung

We have seen over the years a number of local companies that try to do this to connect trade amongst countries in a certain region. Have you run into other companies doing something similar?

Peter De Caluwe

This was a challenge for us to say who is our competitor because if you look at the product which we are developing the network, we don’t have many people doing what we do. If you go into the use cases, allowing a remittance company from the US to directly transfer money into Latin, there are multiple people doing that. If you look at the payouts, the mass payouts, there’s multiple successful companies doing that. So as I said, we are not focused on competitors, we see them as cooperators there. Where we basically focus on them, allowing them to transfer money.

Hans Tung

What makes your network approach or membership network approach different? So that you can get into multiple usage cases, other companies doing one or two things.

Peter De Caluwe

I think we are very unique in the emerging market space. If you look where we come from, as I said, we started two and a half years ago, but the company has been another company which has been working in emerging markets for the last 10 years. Now for the emerging markets, there are different scales and different sizes and different complexities. But there is a specificity if you look at Africa or Southeast Asia, Latin America, there are countries where there is APIs with no documentation, technology is not documented the local language, you have regulators, which are very unfamiliar with technologies. So all these complexities, we have been dealing with the last 10 years in the company from where to spin-off. So the idea of going fast, connecting, partnering in emerging markets, sits in our DNA since the beginning. Now, what makes us unique here is that we have been focusing very much on these emerging markets. If you look at the competitors, they have been mainly focused on China, Europe, or US, Mexico,  but we are very focused on Africa. We talk about Africa, but it’s multiple countries, again, with multiple governments, multiple complexities, etc. Southeast Asia is very quick, eight, nine countries, different cultures, different environments. And it’s exactly a specificity to be local, deep integrated, knowing how regulations and governments and structures work and be connected to that.

Rita Yang

And how do you manage to build that network of super local operations? When you mentioned in the previous company that Thunes spun off from?

Peter De Caluwe

So it’s a lot of hard work, it requires boots on the ground. Usually how we operate is we have a local person who will take care of it. So we hire a domestic people who will do business development, who comes from an industry linked to the financial services, who speaks the local language, who knows the culture how to navigate in the country. Obviously, we don’t have people in every African country, we have regional officers. But we have domestic people in Africa domestic in Asia, Southeast Asia. We hired very recently our first people in Brazil and Argentina, they will be basically focused on finding the members and convincing them that there is value in connecting with us. And agreeing then of course, on our on a partnership, and in some countries, you also need to go and see the financial regulators because we are ourselves regulated in the UK. So we have a license from the UK. We also need to go and see the central bank, the local domestic regulator to explain who we are, what we do, how we want to move money in and out of the country, etc. Just a lot of hard work.

Rita Yang

And as the executive chairman yourself, how do you split your time across so many different markets?

Peter De Caluwe

The beauty of our company that we have 70 people.

Hans Tung

Only 70. How many engineers?

Peter De Caluwe

And it’s the engineers around, I would say, technologies is around 30 people here. But we have the core of the platform, which is centralized in Singapore. And then we have people who do the last mile integrations with the domestic who are more based in the region. So we have somebody in Dubai, Africa and Middle East. We have somebody in our Miami office who’s taking care of Latin America. So we have the last mile done domestically. But again, coming back on the 70 people, we cover more than 25 nationalities. So it’s a very global organization with people everywhere around the world, which is very, I would say, I paid against our strength because we have so many cultures, so many views. And we really use these people’s input to understand because I can’t know anything from emerging markets. I know about Singapore because I live here. I know about my home country, but I can’t know the details of Kenya. Except I travel there, but you can’t travel to all these countries. So we really rely on these local specialists that will give us any input. But it’s also a challenge because we have 24 hours operation across the globe. And we are only 70 people.

Hans Tung

You’re headquartered here in Singapore. When did you get the idea that this should be a separate company should be spun off and be pursued differently? And that you should be the person that drives it?

Peter De Caluwe

So about a year ago, slightly over a year, we felt that Thunes and back then the name didn’t exist yet. So we just call it MoneyTransfer Businesses. So the company was back then named TransferTo and the product was MoneyTransfer. So we basically said about more slowly over a year. And the focus here of the product is a focus which is not the same as what we have in the other organization. The quality and profiles we need to develop is another profile where on once in the previous company or the mother organization. We are much deep integrated into telcos and how they operate and what they do. We’re here to sway more FinTech moving money, regulated business etc. So we felt that giving it a separate life with a focused team, a dedicated team on their own was gonna give us more speed to get things done. It’s about if you have to do two tasks, always continuously next to each other, you will take by default the one that is the easiest way. And so here in Thunes there is an organic growth but it’s very tough, you need to go hard work etc. So we were worried that people would always pick the easiest one. So spinning it off, we have now people hundred percent focus on the difficult job to be done. That’s the task we want to do, we are generally realizing this. And then we had to find a name. So we came up with the name Thunes, which is actually a French word for money, slang for money. So it has a link to money. And we call our people Thunesters. So we are very focused on having our own identity, own culture, own focus. Again, it’s a regulated business. So we need to be also following the rules of the regulators in many countries. But that was the main reason.

Rita Yang

So you have had extensive experience in the cross border payments financial world? How does your background help you in building Thunes?

Peter De Caluwe

My career actually started a long time ago in the payments terminals. So the hardware that you’ve seen today in retail stores like where you swipe your card, you put your card in, those was the first five years of my career. And then I moved into the acquiring of Visa MasterCard, which is basically the processing of a transaction behind the terminal for another five years. And at the end of that 10 years, I ran to other people who have the basic idea to launch a payment gateway for online merchants, and I got excited by it. I joined them as many people convince my wife to put money in a company and startup etc. So we did all that pain and then I ran that organization OGONE was it called payment gateway deal 2012 where we sold it to Ingenico, we’d say back then it was close to half a billion-dollar. It was 360 million euros when we sold it. And we felt that we did a great job. It was a payment gateway, we had more than 60,000 online retailers using the gateway, we processed 2 billion euros per month on process volume on the gateway. So, it was a scalable retail platform. And that’s also the reason why Ingenico bought it. Then I stayed at Ingenico for one year and I got more exposure for emerging markets, because my company OGONE was very much focused on Europe. So I got exposure to Africa, to Southeast Asia. It feels like there’s so much faster in growth, but also in terms of opportunities. I felt like in Europe, if there are five opportunities, I can fail four times. And then the last one I need to hit. We’re in emerging markets, I feel like 1000 opportunities, you can fail a lot and still have a long way to go, it’s that speed of entrepreneurship and willing to create an infrastructure that works, and again, that word infrastructure is very important. And I saw like everything infrastructure wise, you fix in an emerging market, it kind of works. So I joined Naspers, it’s a very nice company. Back in those days, I didn’t know Naspers that well. I didn’t know Tencent that well So obviously, now they are very famous. But back then Naspers acquired different FinTech companies in Latin America, in India, and in Africa, etc. And the CEO back then asked me if this would be something for me to run and to centralize and to create one brand. So that’s where we created the PayU logo and brand which exists today.

Peter De Caluwe

As I said, Naspers is an amazing company, globally, a lot of emerging markets. But this also meant that I had to travel to all these emerging markets on a very regular basis. And the family actually said, look, we did a marathon with OGONE. We sold it and now you’re gonna do another marathon. It was time to take a sabbatical. So after two years of hard work, I resigned and took a couple of years just to think what I wanted to do, did a lot of angel investments, and found out I’m not very good in angel investment. But then I found another model, which was giving advice on strategy and product for private equities, who are professional investors. So they would look at the investment side, I would look at the product and the technology and the infrastructure side. And then I would co-invest with them if it happens. So I did a couple of deals in emerging markets. And this is where I run into the owner of TransferTo, who basically said that the company has so much more potential than it has today. When you take a look, and I got excited and I will do myself again things instead of telling founders what to do. I was like, I want to do it myself again. And this is about two and a half years ago.

Peter De Caluwe

I moved to Singapore a little bit earlier, we were on an ID with a family to move to around the world. So Singapore was one of the hubs we wanted to live. But now we kind of stuck here, and it’s a nice place to be.

Hans Tung

How many places did you go between Dubai and Singapore?

Peter De Caluwe

Actually, we did. Belgium already from Belgium. We moved to Dubai. We lived three years in Dubai and then we moved here, now we are four years here. Initially, the idea was two or three years, but it’s a nice place.

Rita Yang

So when thinking about emerging markets, one of the things that we cannot avoid is the number of unbanked people. So, how do you go solving that? Is that a problem to you at all?

Peter De Caluwe

I would not say that we are going to solve it, because it’s our members who are solving it. So if you look again, coming back to Kenya, if you look at M-Pesa. I see M-Pesa as a bank customer, that we need to define bank customers, so if the customer only has the possibility to have cash in his pockets, then he’s an unbanked customer. If he has a tool or access to a tool where we can basically hold these funds in an electronic way, it’s kind of a bank customer. So, meaning a proper wallet like GrabPay, is a potential bank customer in my perception. So, the more of our partners launching these wallets, mobile money accounts, etc. the more pushing, the more our network becomes valuable. Because the more users at the end, users that will be having access to the network. And we’re not solving it ourselves, it’s our members who are solving that.

Rita Yang

Across the different emerging markets you serve, what are some of the fastest-growing ones you have seen in transactions?

Peter De Caluwe

We have been focusing on the use cases ourselves. If you look at the Kenya M-Pesa and PayPal, it’s a very fast-growing instrument. If we see trends actually going from Africa into China, it’s a very fast-growing instrument. If we look at end-users, we don’t follow really how many banked or unbanked customers are there. But there is still a large population. I don’t have the numbers here with me. We have done some study around it on pure cash people. There are still more than a billion customers to go. And we hope we let our partners push their products out. I mean, we have seen in China, how it moves very quickly with Alipay and WeChat Payment how fast it can take up. But there’s a lot of hurdles. I mean, is the government supportive? You’ve seen them demonetization in India, all of a sudden it springs and there is a way more electronic payments. If other governments take these initiatives, I mean, there are a lot of elements of play going from corruption and non-supportive government infrastructure domestically, it’s completely missing, there is also tax avoidance, etc. So there are a lot of elements that play in how do you get rid of cash.

Hans Tung

By being in Singapore, and obviously you are an experienced founder and as someone who just doing it for the very first time, what are the advice that you can share with other founders who are trying to build a regional startup from Singapore as the first question? And the second question is what are some surprises you have found by being a founder in Singapore compared to Europe or Dubai?

Peter De Caluwe

I would say on the first one, I’m probably still a very traditional European person, and I don’t think big enough. I need to push myself every time very hard to think way bigger than what I’m thinking of. And this is something I also recognize a little bit in Singaporean entrepreneurs that they are. Singapore is a very small country. You need to think way bigger and directly have that ambition to rule the world in what you’re good at.

I think what you should not do is rule with 50 products, you should focus on one to three things where you’re really good at and then just go from the default setting that you will one day cover 20,30,40,50,60 countries. And I do some coaching here at one of the universities of entrepreneurs of young people who just set up a small company, they get some funding from the school and then we get going. Again, thinking big, rich are completely missing. They really think like I want to do something in Singapore, and I think about Malaysia, and think very large. So that’s for me the first element which I would highly recommend.

Hans Tung

What are the interesting surprises for building a startup in Singapore?

Peter De Caluwe

For me, compared to other countries, Singapore has an amazing government supporting you, they support you as an entrepreneur with grants, they support you as an entrepreneur opening up doors at specific countries. we had Singapore Enterprise, we didn’t get grants, but we just got contacts, which is for us in emerging markets, very important to get just a door open to the ambassador or to the governor of a central bank, etc. And the people of Singapore Enterprise have been pushing us in all these countries are, everywhere they can they have a relation to open up the door. I’ve never seen it in any other country, they support entrepreneurship to grow outside of Singapore.

Hans Tung

And what’s the one thing that you want to improve what they do?

Peter De Caluwe

It’s the employment side to get talent here. So obviously we are a small company, and we are not having the name like HP or Google, not a sexy name. So if you look at, we are a FinTech company, we need engineers, it might sound weird, but the universities here produce a certain amount of engineers per year, of course, the sort of production line, it sounds obvious for people that the production line gives a certain amount. The good ones are grabbed directly by big companies. So the people who are left there are maybe not the motivated ones, brilliant ones that we want. So, we are challenged to find people here. So, we are a little bit obliged to look outside of the country, and then we have challenges to get employment passes here approved for different reasons. The challenge is to get the right talent.

Hans Tung

Where have you tried to bring talent from into Singapore?

Peter De Caluwe

Mainly Europe, USA and we want to have more experienced people who have done this before.

Hans Tung

And if you set up an R&D Center in those places, the costs will go up.

Peter De Caluwe

Yeah. So currently, we have decided to put an R&D Center in the Czech Republic.

Hans Tung

And then the costs will be lower, and people are smart.

Peter De Caluwe

The cost is even higher compared to Singapore. We are very close to the university, the Technical University in Prague. So we have a data engineering team there, having about 20 people now. It’s a team that we share between Thunes and the mother organization, so we use on both sides, but it was the only place where we could get quickly the right talent on board. Now if I look at Singapore elements, I would rather have them here and you’ll be more productive that way, it would be more agile, quicker, more centralized, one team. So, in my point of view, the government has lost taxes because we employed and now somewhere else. So, this is our challenge. And I speak with older entrepreneurs here, it’s similar. We employ more than half of our team here of more than Singaporeans, except me. A lot of young people, we don’t find them it on specific roles, it’s very hard to find and we have to get them from abroad.

Rita Yang

If I walk into the Thunes office today, what kind of vibe will I get? In other words, I’m trying to get a sense of the culture you guys have.

Peter De Caluwe

Well, we have created a culture which is a startup. So, you will see a corporate office, we are squeezed. I mean, it’s nice, it’s representable, but it’s not a corporate place. It’s a startup open space. Everybody works in one big environment, there are a couple of meeting rooms. We don’t do those foosball tables etc. We try to understand what people want, what drives them, what motivates them, and creating them, giving them the experience to grow with the business, we are still a regulated business. So we need to be a little bit strict on a couple of elements. And so, we still want to have people being responsible, focusing on doing the right things, not be tempted to go into corruption etc. So we need to be strict on that element. So you will feel a combination of a fun startup that you will see like in Google and Facebook, etc. But then, combined with a little bit of more serious people.

Hans Tung

A serious question before we move into the quickfire sessions is on Cryptocurrency, what are your thoughts on that? How does it impact your business? And Facebook trying to push Libra? What’s your thought on that? We know that being in the US. It is a topic that DC pays a lot of attention to, since it can find out where Libra is a Facebook, it’s easier to try to manage it. So, love to hear what’s your take on Crypto.

Peter De Caluwe

So the Thunes network currently we process more than 70 currencies. For me in my perspective, a Cryptocurrency is 71,72,73. It’s another currency that we put on the network. I see it more positively. the more of these currencies, the better for our network. We have done some pilot work with some of them.

Peter De Caluwe

We don’t process crypto currently, but we have some cryptocurrencies changing crypto into Fiat, and then we would process them. The reason that we don’t process currently cryptos on the network is that the target markets where we operate, they’re not that developed. I mean, when is the last time you bought crypto? You need to be a little bit of engineer to buy it and sell it, so it’s not that easy. And the ones who made it easy, you still need the credit card, that’s our target markets usually don’t have. So, we don’t see that begin in the emerging world, markets where we operate. However, I see it more as a currency. Now the challenge we have is that a lot of regulators, even in developed countries, are very nervous about it. So we decided to currently stay low profile on it, not implemented aggressive, we believe there are still bigger challenges to tackle for us than focusing on a currency which is not used. Now, if Facebook comes in, this might change the game. Because they have multiple users, but I think there is still a challenge to think about with Facebook. Again, if you talk about our target audience in emerging markets, they have cash. So how do you convert cash into crypto and how do you convert crypto back into cash? Because one day they will leave maybe still the cash to pay? No, it is that element which is still a question mark. And maybe if you’re listening in, we can solve that for them.

Rita Yang

Yeah, I think it’s the same challenge that the credit card or the mobile payment system has. People need a way to connect whatever they have now and for the future. We’re going to end the session with a series of quickfire questions, so just say whatever comes to your mind. What’s something you read recently you would recommend?

Peter De Caluwe

A book called third space. It’s actually a book that I recommend reading. It’s quite funny. It explains you how to switch your gears between a private life and the work life, and how to get rid of the stress that you bring home. So it’s a very interesting book. It’s basic stuff that you should know. Now you just have no other place from home. Remember, there’s a third place between work and going home, you just jump out of it for a second and you get yourself and the person who wrote is very interesting, because he did a lot of work on, for example, paramedical people who work in an emergency room, they see real everyday 10,15,20 times. And how they go home and take the children on the bed story running, so it’s he did a lot of work on that, and you can also use that.

Rita Yang

I heard a lot of people sit in the car for a long time before they walk into the door with their family.

Peter De Caluwe

And that’s probably that space.

Rita Yang

What’s the best piece of advice you have ever been given?

Peter De Caluwe

I would come back on thinking big. As an entrepreneur, you work hard, you’ve so much focused on the details. And you can’t see the bigger picture anymore. It’s a combination of getting yourself out of the woods, lock yourself up somewhere where you have some fun and think way bigger. And I tend to use the moments usually in a plane. And today they start implementing wireless in the plane. So, it’s annoying because you’re still distracted. But it’s still a moment that you would like on your own. And you can think on things which you can do in your day to day, thinking big is really important.

Rita Yang

Last question, if you could have dinner with three people in the world live or dead, who would the three people be?

Peter De Caluwe

I need to answer that on the spot. I would like to buy some time.

Hans Tung

It could be a musician, it could be entertainer it could be thought leader.

Peter De Caluwe

It’s definitely gonna be somebody of great entrepreneurs, I think Steve Jobs would definitely be there. Because just reading his books or even if somebody like Richard Branson was still alive, the story, and I think that the ex-CEO of Naspers Group Koos Bekker is also one of these entrepreneurs who have taken emerging markets very seriously, thinking big and going outside of the box to transform a traditional company into business-wise. If you think for fun, just for fun, I don’t want to give it a political angle, but just for fun, I think Donald Trump would also be cool.

Just probably it will be a McDonalds, but still, it’s gonna be fun, just to for the amusement side. And the last one I would still choose my family.