Ram Tumuluri joined ‘sleep on stranger’s sofa’ Couchsurfing network in 2014

Ram Tumuluri was so short of funds just two years ago, when he was already negotiating with the Maltese government, that he joined the ‘stay with a stranger for free’ network, Couchsurfing, to have somewhere to stay on his planned return to Singapore, without having to pay hotel bills or rent.

Couchsurfing is an internet-based network by means of which members look for somewhere to say for free, a complete stranger’s home, when travelling or moving to a new place. It is used mainly by young people who are short of funds and prepared to take that kind of risk.

Unlike Air BNB, you do not stay there when the home-owners are absent, but when they are present, and you pay nothing. The site gets its name from the contemporary verb ‘couchsurfing’, which means camping out on friends’ sofas when you don’t have a home of your own and can’t afford to pay hotel bills or rent.

So in 2014 Tumuluri was looking to sleep on strangers’ sofas when he left Canada (and his financial troubles there) for Singapore, but in January 2015 he was at meetings with Maltese businessmen, hosted at the offices of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, telling those businessmen confidently that his outfit already had an agreement with the Maltese government to run Malta’s public hospitals. This was months before the public call for tender bids.