Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ: VEON, Euronext Amsterdam: VEON), a global digital operator that provides mobile connectivity and services, announces today that Beeline Uzbekistan, part of the VEON Group of Companies, has become a digital partner of the large-scale International project Tumaris.TECH, a programme that will support women's initiatives in Information Technology (IT). 

The Tumaris.TECH project brings together women working and doing business in the field of IT across Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. The initiative will include workshops, accelerator programmes, case studies on start-ups, classes on financial literacy and other relevant topics.

The first event will be the Tumaris.HACK online hackathon, scheduled for May 27-29, with women across the Central Asian countries invited to create prototypes of digital products that solve current socio-economic problems in financial services, e-commerce, DeepTech and other areas. Applications for teams and individual participants are accepted by the organisers until May 23rd 2022.

“Developing and supporting local IT talent is paramount to the success of Uzbekistan's digital transformation,” said Kaan Terzioglu, CEO, VEON. “By holding a hackathon designed only for female participants, we are not only implementing a completely new and unique practice in Central Asia, but also helping to empower female IT professionals in a digital world.”

The second phase of the hackathon and incubation programme starts in September 2022. This will be followed by case studies of start-ups, created throughout the project, presented to the collected participants and speakers in February 2023.

“In today's digital environment, women are playing an ever-increasing role and we want to encourage this as much as possible,” continues Andrzej Malinowski, CEO, Beeline Uzbekistan. “Our goal is to equip Tumaris.TECH participants with the knowledge they need and create the conditions for them to build successful start-ups.” 

Beeline will present iPads to the winners of the hackathon and will also take part in the project events as a company with deep expertise in the field of digital technologies. Representatives of VEON will also become members of the judging panel and mentors to participants, sharing their experience during the June incubation and acceleration programme, where Beeline will organise a training module in digital areas.