Call Center Tycoon Laurent Junique Debuts On Singapore’s 50 Richest

This story is part of Forbes’ coverage of Singapore’s Richest 2022. See the full list here.

Newcomer to the list Laurent Junique is the ultimate globetrotter. He grew up moving to a new country every couple years because his parents were in the oil industry. Now, the French citizen has a call center company based in Singapore that went public on the New York Stock Exchange in late 2021. Junique, 56, owns the lion’s share of the company, called TDCX, which had a tough first 10 months as a public entity: Despite revenue growth, shares fell 65% since the IPO. That decline took his net worth from $3 billion early last October to $825 million.

Junique, who has described himself as “an entrepreneur at heart,” reportedly had his first business idea at age 13—melting old glass bottles and recycling them into wine glasses. (That idea didn’t take root.) After spending two years following university working for consumer products giant Unilever, Junique headed to Singapore with a plan to start his own business. In 1995, he launched Teledirect to handle calls, emails and faxes for a variety of clients. The company rebranded as TDCX in 2019 after expanding into services that include moderating content, marketing and e-commerce support; CX is industry jargon for “customer experience.” The company earned $77 million in profit on revenue of $410 million in 2021; in 2020, 62% of revenue was from two customers: Facebook (since renamed Meta Platforms) and Airbnb.

In a May conference call with analysts, TDCX lowered its expectations for 2022, saying revenue would likely grow around 19% rather than the previous forecast of roughly 25%—due to lower revenue growth from its top clients. Still, TDCX is expanding its footprint, adding new operations in Indonesia and Vietnam to the 11 countries where it already operates.