VEON Officially Launches in Pakistan

VEON today marked its official launch in Pakistan as it partnered with Jazz to offer free of charge usage for 53 million Jazz users.

For those who don’t know, VEON can be best described as a platform that will offer a bunch of services, from communication to almost every imaginable thing.

Basic module will offer communication, i.e. chat, calls, and other functions that one may need for basic telephony.

Then there will be additional value additions, such as customers would be allowed to order Careem, Uber or other ride-hailing services from with-in app, then there could be hotel booking feature, an e-commerce store, peer to peer payments and what not.

VEON said that possibilities are endless, but they will rely on third-party or partners for services that are mentioned above.

Jazz and VEON officials at the Launch from VEON in Pakistan – (From Left to Right) Aniqa Afzal, Chief Digital Officer at Jazz, Chistopher Schlaffer, Chief Commercial & Digital Officer at VEON, Aamir Ibrahim, CEO of Jazz and Mark Group Chief External and Public Affairs Officer at VEON

VEON, in Pakistan, has already partnered with Jazz Cash, Daraz, and dozens of publishers to begin with.

VEON said that it will ideally like partners — that could be small startups to big telcos — to develop solutions that could be offered to millions of VEON customers.

Model will essentially expose small startups to wider audience while sharing some revenue with VEON.

VEON, with an annual budget of $100 million, will also partner with telcos by luring them through a revenue share — from services that platform will offer — against free data services for VEON users.

In actuality, this means that customer will get free data for VEON usage, or for any feature with-in VEON. Telecos, in return will share revenue from the margins that VEON will retain from third-party service providers (Careem for instance).

VEON thinks its a win-win scenario for everyone as the entire ecosystem will benefit from the platform.

Not to mention, VEON platform — a company of VEON Limited — will operate not as part of Jazz but as an independent entity in Pakistan. Its agreement with Jazz is non-exclusive and other operators can also partner with VEON, based on their separate terms.

You can expect a lot more about VEON, its strategy, offerings and future plans during coming days, but for now you can download the app for Android from here and the iOS version here.