Social Impact Tech: Hans Osnabrugge of Talk360 On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
I don’t think technology changes the world simply because it is new, it needs to remove a barrier that people have learned to live with. Communication is one of those barriers.
As a part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Hans Osnabrugge.
Hans Osnabrugge is CEO and co-founder of Talk360, which for ten years has enabled affordable international calls to any mobile or landline — no WiFi, app, or smartphone needed on the receiving end — serving communities often overlooked by unreliable internet access. With a background in mobile, fintech and entrepreneurship, and as Chairman of NjiaPay, he’s focused on building technology that improves access, financial inclusion and connectivity for underserved markets.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
I grew up in a small village in the Netherlands with my two-years-older sister. My father worked for the local government, while my mother traditionally took care of the children, and both were heavily involved in unpaid voluntary work for the community, football and the church. I always had big dreams around sport, work, travel and my career, which were not always appreciated in a more Protestant, Calvinistic environment.
When my father suddenly passed away from a heart attack when I was 16, that changed everything. I had to take on a lot of responsibility at a young age and suddenly found myself moving into early adulthood. My mother was helped by someone at the bank with money and mortgage advice, and I remember how grateful she was. I thought, I’m good with maths and numbers, maybe I can help people with their financial plans and struggles in the future. That was my first real sense of purpose and profit.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
There have been a lot of interesting moments. I became the youngest certified financial planner in the Netherlands at 25, and the youngest senior at a wealth management firm serving some of the country’s wealthiest entrepreneurial families at 29.
At 34, I started one of the first venture-building firms in the Netherlands, Brooklyn Ventures. After years in wealth management, I wanted to use what I had learned about investment and finance to help build businesses. From there, I became involved as an investor and entrepreneur in more than 30 fundraises, working with entrepreneurs to turn ideas into companies.
At 39, I experienced my first bankruptcy with the predecessor of Talk360. That was a difficult period, but it also led me to rethink the kind of companies I wanted to be involved in. I started Talk360 in South Africa that same year and decided to focus on companies with a clear purpose and a focus on technology for good. In 2022, we raised funding for Talk360 from a combination of unicorn builders from South Africa, the Netherlands and the UK, alongside African VCs. That eventually led to the creation of the successful fintech spin-off NjiaPay two years later.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
There are three people who stand out. My business partner Dean Hiine introduced me to the challenges facing Africa and Africans in 2016, which ultimately changed the direction of my career. He became one of my best friends and co-founder of Talk360 and NjiaPay.
My business partner Ruger Schouten joined me in setting up Brooklyn Ventures in 2011 and pushed me not to give up after the bankruptcy of RingCredible, the predecessor of Talk360, in 2016. He is still a shareholder and board member in most of the companies I am involved in.
And my wife Alexandra Kolkman, a very strong and strongheaded woman who has supported and challenged me for almost 25 years. She kicks me in the ass, brings me back to reality, but never stops believing in me and my bigger dreams. She has also raised three amazing children with me through all those extremely stressful years.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Curiosity: I’ve always wanted to understand why something works the way it does, rather than simply accepting that it does. That curiosity was important in building any company and Talk360 was no exception because the problem we were solving required us to look beyond the obvious technology.
Persistence: Building for underserved markets is rarely straightforward. Different countries have different infrastructure, cultures and customer needs. You have to keep going when the easy solution doesn’t work.
Pragmatism: I care much more about whether something solves a real problem than whether it sounds impressive. With Talk360, the simplest solution can sometimes be the most valuable one. In this case that’s giving someone the ability to call a normal mobile or landline without requiring the recipient to have the app, internet or even a smartphone. Connectivity matters on a personal level because it keeps people connected to the people who matter and on a business level, because being able to reach someone cost-effectively and reliably can be the difference between an opportunity moving forward and being lost.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?
At the most basic level, we are trying to solve the problem of access. We live in a world where being connected is often taken for granted, but the reality is that our connectivity is more fragile than we think. It only takes a natural disaster, a power outage, a conflict or a major network failure for people who are normally connected to suddenly become unreachable. When that happens, it is a problem that affects individuals but also their loved ones that are trying to reach them as well as for businesses that find themselves unable to reach customers, employees or partners.
Talk360 was created because we felt that communicating with someone abroad should not require both people to have a smartphone, a reliable internet connection or access to the same digital platform. We make it possible to cost-effectively call any mobile or landline around the world, even when the person receiving the call is completely offline. In a world that assumes we are always connected, we think there is real social value in making sure people can still reach each other when that connectivity breaks down.
How do you think your technology can address this?
We deliberately built Talk360 around the infrastructure people already have. The person making the call needs the Talk360 app, but the person receiving it does not need the app, WiFi, mobile data or even a smartphone.
While that sounds simple it removes a huge amount of friction. It means someone can call a parent who has a basic mobile phone, or reach a family member during an internet outage. In 2025, Talk360 connected over 6 million people in this way and our impact is growing.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
I didn’t start Talk360 because I spotted a gap in the calling market but because I understood what a bad connection actually costs someone.
From the moment I met Dean I had a pull towards Africa. And one thing that is obvious there is that for a huge number of people there, a phone call is really important whether it is for finding out how families are or whether money sent home has arrived in time. When that line drops it can be disastrous. Financial inclusion started somewhere more basic than a bank account for us. It started with making sure people could actually reach each other reliably. Ten years on, we’re connecting more than 6 million people a year.
How do you think this might change the world?
I don’t think technology changes the world simply because it is new, it needs to remove a barrier that people have learned to live with. Communication is one of those barriers. There are more than 300 million people living outside the country where they were born, and for many of them, staying connected to family is an essential part of everyday life. At the same time, internet connectivity remains unreliable for billions of people. If we can make communication more affordable, accessible and resilient, we can help people maintain relationships, access opportunities and support each other across borders.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
Technology should never be treated as inherently good simply because it solves a problem. The more dependent people become on digital infrastructure, the more important it is to think about what happens when that infrastructure fails, or when technology is used in ways its creators didn’t anticipate. For me, that is one reason resilience matters so much. We shouldn’t build a world where every form of communication depends on the same network. Internet-based communication has transformed our lives, but we also need alternatives when it isn’t available.
Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”?
1. Identify a real problem rather than apply technology as a first thought
The best products I’ve worked on have started with a problem that people already experience. Talk360 wasn’t created because we wanted to build another communications app. We saw that people needed an affordable way to call family members who might not have internet access, and we built around that need.
2. Don’t assume everyone has the same infrastructure
It is easy to design technology around the conditions you know yourself. But a smartphone, reliable WiFi or an international credit card can’t be assumed everywhere. Designing for different realities often leads to a much more inclusive product.
3. Make the solution simple
People don’t want to understand the technology behind a product. They just want it to work. With Talk360, the value proposition is straightforward: you can call someone anywhere in the world, even if they don’t have the app or internet.
4. Build for resilience
We tend to think about connectivity as something that is always available. It isn’t. Internet outages, natural disasters, infrastructure failures and government shutdowns can all disrupt digital communication. Good technology needs to account for those moments too.
5. Measure the impact, not just the growth
Numbers like downloads and revenue matter, but they don’t tell you the whole story. What matters to me is whether the technology is actually improving someone’s life. Behind that calls that we enable are millions of conversations between people who otherwise might have struggled to stay in touch.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
Don’t feel that you need to solve the world’s biggest problem overnight. Start with something you genuinely understand and care about. Find a problem that people experience every day and ask whether there is a better way of solving it. For me, the motivation came from something very basic which was people wanting to speak to the people they love. That may not sound like a revolutionary problem, but solving practical problems at scale can have a much bigger impact than trying to build something that simply sounds impressive.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
The best place to go is to our website, talk360.com, which has all of the work we are doing and how we are connecting people and businesses across the world. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hansosnabrugge/
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
Social Impact Tech: Hans Osnabrugge of Talk360 On How Their Technology Will Make An Important… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.