The encrypted messaging platform Telegram has already surpassed 800 million month-to-month lively customers and is rising by 2.5 million sign-ups day-after-day, its founder Pavel Durov mentioned on Tuesday.
“We’re completely satisfied and grateful, regardless that this huge progress additionally means larger bills on storage and site visitors to serve our customers,” Durov posted. “Fortunately, Telegram is tremendous environment friendly in the case of bills and we had a terrific begin with monetization final yr.”
Telegram hasn’t fairly managed to turn out to be worthwhile simply but, however Durov mentioned it was nearer to that objective “in absolute numbers” than Twitter or Snapchat.
To assist with financing, Telegram has issued round $270 million of bonds this week, with the assistance of “well-known funds with stellar reputations.” Durov famous that he invested “tens of hundreds of thousands” into the brand new bonds, on high of the lots of of hundreds of thousands he spent on the platform over the previous decade.
“Some folks urged I ought to have as a substitute purchased a home or a jet. However I choose to remain centered on my work,” he mentioned. “Tons of of hundreds of thousands of individuals signed up for Telegram as a result of they wished an impartial messaging platform that may put its customers first. It’s my duty – and my life’s work – to maintain delivering this platform.”
The 2022 Forbes Billionaires Checklist estimated Durov’s web price at $11.5 billion. The St. Petersburg-born entrepreneur and his mathematician brother Nikolay additionally based VK – Russia’s reply to Fb – earlier than growing Telegram in 2013.
The platform grew exponentially in 2022, after Meta-owned WhatsApp modified its privateness settings. It was within the high 5 downloaded purposes worldwide, and accounted for nearly 9% of cellular information site visitors in Russia.
Durov himself left Russia in 2013 and has since obtained the citizenships of France and the United Arab Emirates. Telegram itself is registered as a limited-liability firm in Dubai, however the location of its bodily headquarters has not been made public.
Earlier this yr, Norway moved to ban Telegram from authorities gadgets, citing considerations over its “Russian origins,” whereas a courtroom in Brazil tried to ban the app on grounds that it refused to reveal details about alleged “neo-Nazi” accounts. The ban was shortly reversed, nevertheless.
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