Interviews

Badreddine Ouali is the Founder and Co-CEO of Vermeg Group, a specialized software house providing financial services in banking, capital markets and insurance. Established in 2002, Vermeg is based in the Netherlands but has a large back office in Tunisia. Prior to 2002, Ouali had founded a Tunis-based software company in 1993 named BFI, which he decided to re-establish as Vermeg in Amsterdam due to mounting political and economic pressures in Tunisia.

Ouali begins the interview by discussing his childhood and upbringing in Tunisia, which he describes as modest and typical for families of his generation. He later moved to France to pursue an engineering degree at the École des Mines de Saint-Étienne from 1983 to 1986, explaining how many high-achieving students would move abroad due to a lack of universities in Tunisia at the time. Ouali relates how he had intended to return from France after studying and working there for a few years, while sending money back to his mother in Tunisia. However, he ended up staying in France longer than he had anticipated and lived in Paris, starting a job in financial software with McDonnell Douglas, a former U.S. aerospace company that provided technology for the financial services industry. After two years, he joined another IT company, quickly rising to a senior position before the company was acquired by the French telecom operator, France Télécom (known as Orange today).

Under the new ownership of France Télécom, Ouali discusses tensions with French executives who viewed him as an outsider that did not belong at the company. Deciding to stay regardless, he proposed to introduce new technologies and software to emerging markets – an idea that the French executives disagreed with. He was later fired from his position, a point at which he “decided to apply the ideas I proposed, which is to try to conquer emerging markets and use Microsoft technology.” Ouali returned to Tunisia in 1993 and self-financed a new banking software business named BFI. Given that Tunisia was in the process of reforming its financial markets, Ouali utilized his experience in France and established himself as an expert in this emerging field. He explains how there was little time to hire a team, which meant that he worked independently for several years, investing only “my own person and my time” as he gained clients.

As BFI became successful over the course of the 1990’s, it attracted unwelcome attention from the family of the Tunisian president. Ouali describes an offer from the family which wanted to partner with the company – an offer which Ouali did not accept. Soon after, he relates how the company started losing market share. He feared that his “employees would pay the bill as well” and that the company would go bankrupt. This led Ouali to start his new business in 2002, establishing the holding company in the Netherlands and focusing on international markets. Nevertheless, the company kept its back office in Tunisia.

Ouali continues by addressing the competitive advantage of his software companies and attributes the success to many complementary elements. One such element was an attention to the user experience, which improved usability at a time when few companies invested into the look and feel of their interfaces. Ouali also highlights his workforce’s culture of hard work and emphasizes the competitiveness of Tunisia from a cost perspective. Finally, he adds that there was a component of luck as “sometimes, you release a new thing and it’s the right moment. When it is the right moment, then it works.” Over the course of building software companies, Ouali underscores the need to foster equity in the hiring process and the importance of creating an environment in which employees feel they are not just earning a salary but making an impact in their communities. He relates how social impact initiatives at his companies encountered both successes and failures, noting that the failures represented important lessons. One such failure, as Ouali describes, involved investments into a center for orphans which became impossible for his employees to manage. He points to the need for institutional support, stating how “sometimes the problems are bigger than you and me, and there are things we cannot do with only money, good faith, and energy. That requires scientists, doctors, structures, state, government, and a lot of energy.”

Addressing the responsibility of business to society, Ouali speaks about a “collective responsibility” that includes participation and collaboration between government, business, and the non-profit sector. He explains how he felt that the last component, the non-profit sector, had been missing in Tunisia prior to the Jasmine Revolution in 2010-2011 – the popular uprising which led to the ousting of Tunisia’s former president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. He also felt that development efforts had largely been focused on the coastal part of Tunisia, which left the interior portion of the country without resources. In this context, Ouali established the Tunisia Foundation for Development in 2016 with the goal of creating centers that would support entrepreneurship, employment, and training for Tunisian youth. He also speaks about his contributions towards the launching of the Smart Tunisia program in 2019, a public-private initiative with the aim of encouraging digital investment and fostering the IT ecosystem in Tunisia.

Ouali concludes the interview by addressing his views on the primary challenges for entrepreneurs in Tunisia today. One such challenge is a lack of infrastructure, which he also describes as an opportunity that has allowed companies such as those involved in money transfer to excel in Africa. He also discusses his view that currency control represents an obstacle which makes it difficult for Tunisian entrepreneurs to expand their businesses beyond the local market. Furthermore, Ouali addresses the future impacts of Artificial Intelligence on business and society more broadly. He recognizes that significant progress can be made in fields such as medicine, but highlights that it is the collective responsibility of business, government, and developers to use and develop the technology in a socially responsible manner.

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