VEON
1992 Originally founded as VimpelCom
40k +
Number of staff at VEON
$ 8.9
billion
The annual revenue for VEON ( 2016 ) thinking to delivery and strategizing the next move . Transformation leadership is central to a CTO role .
“ We need to understand software . Coming from telecoms we were very linked into hardware and software , coupled together . Those elements needed to de-couple to understand software much better as a skill in its own right .
“ And we need to be extremely financially savvy . As a CTO , I cannot just bring ideas to my CFO , my CEO , which I wouldn ’ t believe in if it was my own money . The metrics of customer engagement , the metrics of brand , the metrics of return on investment , they need to be very , very closely felt in the technology strategy in order to make the transformation real .”
The company ’ s emergence as a brand – and platform – called VEON speaks very publicly about how it can deploy technology to empower its customers . As it advertises to the world , it offers customers a chance to “ Be Truly Free ”. There is no doubt it ’ s an ethos very closely aligned to Malik ’ s own personal beliefs in terms of how the company should be operating .
He tells us that as a child in India he endured frequent trips to doctors to patch up the scrapes of his adventures . As a result , he aspired to become a doctor himself at the time , to improve lives and “ excel in solving their problems ”. While his career took a different path , he says the same basic
42 December 2017