After 20 years of operations, Netherlands-based global telecoms and digital services group VimpelCom has announced that its changing its name to VEON. The move, according to a statement, is crucial as the firm “reinvents itself into a global tech company and brings a revolutionary Internet mobile platform to hundreds of millions of customers in the markets of tomorrow.”
The group is headquartered in Amsterdam and serves over 235 million customers in various markets globally. Together with the rebrand from VimpelCom to VEON, the group has announced partnerships with brands such as Deezer, STUDIO+ (Vivendi) and Mastercard in a move meant to transform its subscribers’ internet experience.
“VEON is the name for both the company and its new personal internet platform, which integrates powerful data analytics and artificial intelligence to put the user in control. It tears down the archaic and inefficient bricks-and-mortar service model and replaces it with a smooth, easy, fun, contextual and intuitive experience where everything users need is at their fingertips,” the group said in statement.
VimpelCom has a number of subsidiaries globally including ‘s brands include Djezzy (in Algeria), Beeline (in Russia and CIS), Kyivstar (in Ukraine), Wind (in Italy and Greece), Mobilink (in Pakistan) and Banglalink (in Bangladesh) among others.
VimpelCom was incorporated in Bermuda with headquarters in Amsterdam. As of April 2012, it was ranked as the sixth largest mobile network operator in the world by subscribers with 214 million customers (as per December 31, 2012) in 18 countries. However, the group derives most of its revenue from Russia (39%) and Italy (31%).
It was founded in 1992 in Moscow when VimpelCom’s co-founders, Dmitry Zimin and American Augie K. Fabela II came together to pioneer the Russian mobile industry. Augie Fabela, who was then a young entrepreneur from the United States, and Zimin, who was a Russian scientist in his fifties, together launched the Beeline brand in 1993, according to Wikipedia.
The group is however yet to change its URL to reflect the rebrand as it still reads – https://www.vimpelcom.com/ – and not https://www.veon.com/.
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