The Iran war has put pressure on businesses headquartered in the UAE, but Kaan Terzioglu, chief executive of Dubai-based multinational telecommunication and digital services company Veon is not among those pulling back.

Speaking to The Inside Brief with Manus Cranny from the company's Dubai offices, Mr Terzioglu says he is a hundred per cent sure Dubai will come out of this even stronger, and that the ability to access capital and talent is not at risk.

Veon operates across some of the world's most challenging frontier markets, from Pakistan and Bangladesh to Ukraine and Kazakhstan, serving half a billion people across its telecoms and digital services platforms.

Mr Terzioglu describes Veon not as a mobile operator but as a consumer and enterprise services company which happens to have a telecom licence.

Today, 75 per cent of the business comes from traditional telecom services, growing at seven to eight per cent year-on-year. The remaining 25 per cent, covering banking, entertainment, healthcare and ride hailing, grows at 60 per cent year-on-year. Mr Terzioglu expects digital services revenue to exceed telecom revenue within three years.

On the Iran war, Mr Terzioglu draws on experience managing a business through the Russia-Ukraine conflict, when 70 per cent of Veon's revenue came from a war zone overnight. The company had 19,000 people in Russia and 4,000 in Ukraine and had to make a defining choice. They chose Ukraine and exited Russia, losing half the business. Today, Veon is still growing and profitable in Ukraine.

On AI, Veon is building sovereign large language models in local languages including Bangla, Urdu, Punjabi, Kazakh and Ukrainian, working with governments to access trainable data and taking around nine months to build each core model. Mr Terzioglu's ambition is not cost cutting but augmentation. He calls AI the recipe for becoming a superhero and says that those who are late to adapt risk being left behind.

During the conversation, Mr Terzioglu also shared some personal reflections. Growing up in Istanbul during the hyperinflationary environment of the 1970s and 1980s, trading Deutsche marks on the black market, taught Mr Terzioglu one fundamental rule for operating in frontier markets: pricing control.

Veon chief on the Iran war, frontier markets and why AI will create superheroes