Pavel Durov

Some Lesser Known Facts About Pavel Durov

• Does Pavel Durov smoke cigarettes?: No ^[6]KP

• Does Pavel Durov drink alcohol?: No ^[7]KP

• Pavel Durov is a Russian entrepreneur and the man behind the social networking site VK, and the Telegram Messenger. Pavel Durov spent most of his childhood in Turin, Italy where he attended an Italian elementary school, and later, he returned to Russia in 2001.

  

• Pavel Durov is also known as the “Russian Mark Zuckerberg” as he developed the social media platform VKontakte (VK), which is quite similar to Facebook. The social media platform was launched in the year 2006, and the website was developed by Pavel and his brother, Nikolai Durov. Pavel was the CEO of the company, but later in 2014, he was dismissed as CEO of VK after selling the company to Mail.ru, a major Russian internet company. After this, Pavel and his brother went into a self-imposed exile.

  

• The social media platform VK was being used by people to form pages of the politicians contesting the 2011 elections for 450 seats in the 6th State Duma. Later, in the same year, he had a standoff with the Russian police in St. Petersburg as Pavel turned down the government’s demand of shutting down the pages of opposing politicians. In response to this, Durov posted a picture on his social media in which a dog was seen wearing a hoodie with his tongue sticking out.

  

• The office of VKontakte was situated on the fifth and sixth floors of an iconic building Singer House, which is located in central St. Petersburg. In 2012, Pavel Durov and his employees were seen throwing out money from the windows of their offices. They threw out about £1,000 worth of money in the form of paper planes and each note was of the denomination 5,000 Ruble (about £50) to thank people for supporting their social media platform VKontakte.

• In 2012, a major Russian internet company, ‘Mail.ru,’ owned by Ivan Tavrin, offered to buy the Russian social media platform, VK. In response to this, Pavel posted a picture of himself extending his middle finger to show that he had refused the offer made by the company. Later in December 2013, Durov was pressured to sell 12% of VK stocks to Ivan Tavrin. In 2014, Pavel sold all the remaining shares to Mail.ru; making them the sole owner of the social media platform VK.

  

• In April 2014, Pavel left Russia and obtained the citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, an island country in the West Indies. Pavel left Russia along with his brother Nikolai and got citizenship by donating $250,000 to the Sugar Industry Diversification Foundation. He also received $300 million in cash through Swiss Banks, and he decided to focus on a new venture of his own.

• Pavel founded a cross-platform, cloud-based instant messaging application called Telegram. He founded this with the help of his brother in 2013. The headquarters of the company is located in London and Dubai. The application provides end-to-end encrypted video calling, instant messaging, file sharing, and many other services. Later, Pavel tried to launch the ‘Gram’ cryptocurrency and the TON platform; he raised $1.7 billion for the funding of his startup; however, the ventures were stopped by the federal courts.

• In 2011, Pavel donated a million dollars to the Wikimedia Foundation. The foundation is an American non-profit and charitable organization that owns the internet domain names of many movement projects and host sites like Wikipedia.

• In August 2014, Durov made it to the list of the most promising Northern European leader under 30. In 2017, he became a part of the WEF Young Global Leaders event where he represented Finland. In 2018, Fortune magazine featured him in the “40 Under 40” list of the most influential young people in businesses. ^[8]Fortune

• In January 2013, Pavel Durov published his book ‘Durov’s Code- The story of VKontakte and its creator.’

  

• In 2021, after the latest update in the privacy policy of the instant messaging application WhatsApp, other applications like Signal and Telegram witnessed a sudden surge in their popularity among the masses. On 13 January 2021, Telegram saw almost 25 million new users downloading the application because of its enhanced security offerings and data protection. Durov is active on his Telegram channel, and he keeps giving updates on the Telegram channel. ^[9]MoneyControl ^[10]Financial Express

• Pavel Durov is also known for wearing all black clothes, and it gives him a resemblance to the character ‘Neo’ from the film ‘The Matrix.’

  

• Pavel’s brother, Nikolai, is a two-times world champion in programming among students.

  

• Pavel Durov has seen backlash from the Russian government as they keep trying to shut down the operations of Telegram in the country. However, Pavel spends almost $1 million per month to keep the platform running for everyone.

• Pavel Durov‘s grandfather Semyon Petrovich Tulyakov participated in World War II. He served in the 65th Infantry Regiment, participated in the battles at Leningrad front on Krasnoborsky Gatchinsky and other directions, was wounded three times, receiving the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Patriotic War II degree, and on the 40th Victory Day, the Order of the Great Patriotic War level I. After the war, he was arrested.

• Pavel Durov faced the issue of thinning of his hair in his early 20s. However, in his recent pictures, his hair looks better than before which suggests that Pavel received a hair transplant surgery or used some medicinal drugs to stop the process of hair thinning.

• In July 2024, he claimed he had a hundred “biological kids” in 12 countries. In a Telegram post, he revealed that he was a sperm donor and would be open-sourcing his DNA. He said that he wanted to help “destigmatise the whole notion of sperm donation and incentivise more healthy men to do it.” ^[11]Hindustan Times