Telegram was a side project the Durovs built while losing VK — now a billion-user app

Pavel Durov founded VK (VKontakte) in 2006, building it into Russia's largest social network. By 2013, VK had over 100 million monthly active users. Durov was a celebrated entrepreneur in Russia. But his refusal to comply with government demands — including blocking opposition groups and handing over user data — created a growing conflict with the Russian authorities.

In 2013, while still running VK, Durov and his brother Nikolai began working on a side project: a secure messaging app called Telegram. The app was a response to the surveillance state they were fighting. It was not a planned business — it was a side project built by a small team. The first version launched in August 2013, with 100,000 daily active users within two months.

In 2014, the conflict with the Russian government escalated. Durov was forced to sell his remaining shares in VK and leave Russia. He took a small team of 15 core engineers with him, moving between countries before settling in Dubai in 2017. The social network he had built from scratch was no longer his. The side project became his main focus.

Telegram grew steadily, then explosively. Each major Facebook outage drove millions of new users to Telegram. The platform reached 1 billion monthly active users by March 2025. The company raised $1.7 billion in private funding and became profitable in December 2024. The side project that Durov built while losing VK had become one of the world's largest messaging platforms.