VimpelCom registers more than 550 teams in Eurasia Mobile Challenge

Amsterdam (December 3, 2015) - VimpelCom Ltd. (“VimpelCom”, “Company” or “Group”) (NASDAQ:VIP), a leading global provider of telecommunications services headquartered in Amsterdam and serving over 217 million customers, is pleased to announce that more than 550 teams of digital entrepreneurs have signed up to participate in the Eurasia Mobile Challenge, launched by VimpelCom in September this year.

The Eurasia Mobile Challenge is a competition that asks young people from across the region to come up with the industry’s next big mobile solution.

The competition, being held in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, has so far registered 564 teams across the region.

More than 170 of those teams, representing 427 people, participated in acceleration days – aimed at coaching and guiding the teams as they build up to their submissions. The teams were coached and spent time running through their concepts with successful local and international entrepreneurs as well as VimpelCom leaders.

In the first stage of the competition, participants could choose to present ideas in the following categories:  “entertainment and culture”, “environmental benefit”, “social benefit” or any “other”. The most popular category to date has been “social benefit” with more than 200 projects presented.

Yogesh Malik, Group Chief Technology Officer, VimpelCom said: “We are encouraged by the enthusiasm and energy we have seen from the participants. The Eurasia Mobile Challenge will help these young entrepreneurs to shape their future by developing necessary digital skills, and will give them the right connections to enable development of innovative new digital products and services. On behalf of VimpelCom I wish all teams good luck.”

The Eurasia Mobile Challenge is a project under VimpelCom’s Make Your Mark program (link to web pages). The competition is being run in partnership with Huawei Technologies Co, Ltd.

The participating teams now have two weeks to develop their ideas into tangible projects and prototypes before submitting them for online judging. Teams are judged by industry experts from each country on innovativeness, relevance to the local community, scalability and originality, as well the feasibility of the business model. A panel of judges will then select three national finalists who will then progress to a regional final round in Moscow in January 2016. From there, three regional winners will be selected who will then be supported to participate in the Global Mobile Challenge, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, between 22-26 February 2016.

To see the latest news about the competition, visit www.eurasiamobilechallenge.com

About VimpelCom

VimpelCom, an international telecoms company operating in 14 countries and headquartered in Amsterdam, is one of the world’s largest integrated telecommunications services operators providing voice and data services through a range of traditional and broadband mobile and fixed technologies in Russia, Italy, Algeria, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Georgia, Laos, and Zimbabwe. VimpelCom’s operations around the globe cover territory with a total population of approximately 740 million people. VimpelCom provides services under the “Beeline”, “Kyivstar”, “WIND”, “Mobilink”, “banglalink”, “Telecel”, and “Djezzy” brands. As of September 30, 2015 VimpelCom had 217 million mobile customers and 5.8 million fixed-line broadband customers on a combined basis. VimpelCom is traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol (VIP).

For more information follow us on Twitter @VimpelCom or visit our blog blog.vimpelcom.com or website www.vimpelcom.com

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