Born and raised in Singapore, Arrif completed his MBA studies at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Several years later, he gave up a budding career in private equity and management consulting to solve the diner problem of inefficient reservation processes.

Back in 2011, diners were still calling restaurants while flights, hotels, and even movies could already be booked online. As a diner himself, Arrif knew firsthand the frustrations of calling for reservations - having to wait till restaurants opened to reserve, unanswered calls, imperfect information, the list goes on.

Seeing the need for a more efficient reservation method and the large potential for technology in a restaurant industry still using traditional pen and paper, he began tackling the issue a little bit at a time, launching with just nine restaurants on the first version of the reservations platform.

Today, Chope powers online bookings for over 2,000 restaurants across Asia and has seated more than 20 million diners.