On November 6 two sources reported the completion of the purchase of the OLX Kazakhstan classifieds platform. In the release of the international digital operator VEON the buyer is Beeline Kazakhstan, its subsidiary; in the release of the Verny Capital group the buyer is the group itself, and Beeline Kazakhstan is its “portfolio company” [1][2]. The regional outlet Ak Zhaiyk rolled this into the headline “Deal of the year in IT: Bulat Utemuratov bought OLX Kazakhstan” [3].
The OLX Kazakhstan purchase
- $81 million
the price including completion adjustments of about $6 million - $75 million
the price when the deal was announced in October 2025 - 100%
the stake bought by Beeline Kazakhstan - more than 52%
of the country’s active internet audience reached by the platform - about 9 million
monthly active users - just over $28 million
revenue for the year ended March 2026 - 381 days
from announcement to completion (editorial calculation)
According to VEON and OLX Group
- $81 million
The difference is not a matter of shading. Who counts as the buyer decides the answer to the questions of whose asset this is, whose money paid for it and whose strategy it serves. Below is what the primary sources say, what follows from the documents and what is still unknown.
Two releases about one deal
VEON writes that its subsidiary Beeline Kazakhstan has completed the purchase of 100% of the Kazakh company OLX Group LLP, called OLX KZ in the release, from OLX Global B.V. The total came to $81 million, including about $6 million of completion adjustments, and the deal closed after regulatory approvals were received [4]. The same release says Beeline Kazakhstan is majority-owned by VEON [4].
The Verny Capital group said it was reporting “the completion of the deal to acquire 100% of the Kazakh online classifieds business”. The acquisition, in its words, was carried out through its portfolio company Beeline Kazakhstan. The group’s investor Bulat Utemuratov said: “Our task is to scale this asset while preserving its strengths and strengthening its technology component” [2]. Forbes Kazakhstan, Nur.kz, Inbusiness.kz and BES.media published the same text that day. Ak Zhaiyk cites Nege.Aqsha, that is, it retells a retelling [3].
The facts in the two releases match: who the seller is, what stake, what price. They differ on one point only: who owns the buyer.
Who owns Beeline Kazakhstan
The brand Beeline Kazakhstan is operated by KaR-Tel LLP. At the end of 2022, when VEON was selling the Russian Beeline, VEON Holdings B.V. became the direct owner of 75% of KaR-Tel; the other 25% belonged to Bulat Utemuratov through Verny Capital [7]. In September 2024 VEON, in its own release, called Beeline Kazakhstan a company it owns by majority and Verny Capital the other shareholder [8]. In the release of November 6, 2026 the formula is the same: the majority is VEON’s [4].
The editors found no public confirmation that the stakes have changed, but neither release names the group’s current stake. So the cautious conclusion is this: Verny Capital is a co-owner of the buyer, not the buyer itself. If the stake is still a quarter, then by simple proportion about a quarter of OLX KZ economically accrues to the group (editorial calculation; 25% is not officially confirmed for 2026).
Справка. Beeline Kazakhstan serves 11.8 million mobile subscribers and about a million fixed internet users; over five years the company, in its words, has built an ecosystem of 60 own and external products [4]. OLX KZ is headed by Yelena Kim [4].
Price and scale
Announcing the deal on October 21, 2025, VEON and OLX Group named a price of $75 million [5]. The final $81 million is made up of those $75 million and about $6 million of completion adjustments [4]. OLX KZ’s annual revenue is just over $28 million for the year ended March 2026 [13]. The price works out at about 2.9 times revenue (editorial calculation: 81 divided by 28). For comparison, in the Forbes Kazakhstan ranking the platform’s revenue for 2023 was $28.9 million and average traffic 9.6 million [9]. The periods differ, but over three years the order of magnitude has stayed the same.
The audience is harder. The release of November 6 names “more than 52% of the active internet audience” and about 9 million monthly active users [4]. In October 2025 Kazakh outlets wrote of about 10 million people and more than 3.6 million listings [15]. The counting method is not disclosed in the releases, so from the two figures one cannot say whether the audience has grown or shrunk.
Closing took longer than expected. In October 2025 the industry outlet OnlineMarketplaces wrote that the deal was expected to close in the first quarter of 2026 [16]. It closed on November 6, 2026, 381 days after the announcement. Which approvals were needed and why the process dragged on, the releases do not say [1][4].
What the group reported earlier
Since March 2025 the Verny Capital group has reported three deals. On March 13, 2025 it sold, together with its partner Anuar Utemuratov, the Burger King Kazakhstan franchise to Holten Group. Over 12 years the chain grew to 55 restaurants in 14 cities, about 7.5 billion tenge was paid into the budget and more than 1,100 jobs were created [11][12]. On October 13, 2025 the group and the American fund Resource Capital Funds completed the sale of the gold miner RG Gold: the buyer was Zijin Gold International, a subsidiary of Zijin Mining Group. RG Gold’s resource base is 7.6 million ounces under the JORC standard, more than 160 billion tenge has been paid into the budget over the years and about 1,200 jobs were created [10]. The sums of both deals were not disclosed. The advisers were J.P. Morgan Securities plc, BMO Capital Markets and Herbert Smith Freehills [10]. On November 6, 2026 the OLX release followed [2].
In the OLX release the group writes that the deal fits its strategy of expanding the investment portfolio and will strengthen its presence in digital services [2]. As of March 2025, by Kapital.kz’s list, the group still held stakes in ForteBank, RG Gold, KaR-Tel, Sky Mobile, the Ritz-Carlton and Rixos Borovoe hotels and Global Development [12]; RG Gold has since been sold. These public facts add up to a picture: the restaurant and gold-mining parts are sold, the digital part is growing. This is the editors’ conclusion; the group has not set out a general strategy in this form.
There is also a caveat. The October 2025 releases on the OLX purchase came from VEON and OLX Group and named Beeline Kazakhstan, VEON’s operating company, as the buyer; in the texts found, Verny Capital is not mentioned [5][9]. How much the group put into OLX, and whether it put in anything beyond its stake in Beeline Kazakhstan, is stated nowhere.
The seller and the market
The seller explained the deal as a change of priorities. OLX Group CEO Christian Gisy said that handing over OLX KZ fits the strategy of focusing on core categories and key markets, and that the new owner is a company with deep local reach and a powerful digital ecosystem [5]. According to Forbes Kazakhstan, OLX belongs to South Africa’s Naspers [9]. After closing, OLX Group still provides OLX KZ with transitional IT services so that users do not notice the handover [4]. In other words, part of the platform’s technical support stays with the former owner for a time.
Kazakhstan is not alone here. In August 2025 the banking group TBC announced the purchase of a controlling stake (50% plus one share) in OLX Uzbekistan through a joint venture, and the platform will keep the OLX brand and add TBC’s banking products [14]. In Uzbekistan the buyer is a bank, in Kazakhstan a telecom operator; what they share is that in both cases the platform passes to an owner with its own ecosystem. That this is part of VEON’s strategy is visible in its own reporting: in the second quarter of 2026 the group had 227.7 million digital customers, and digital revenue grew 53.6% year on year to more than a quarter of group revenue [13].
What remains unknown
First, who paid and from what funds. The releases do not say. All that is known is that on October 24, 2025 KaR-Tel signed two five-year credit agreements with Bank RBK: for 40 billion tenge (about $74 million) and for 11 billion tenge (about $21 million). In October and November 15 billion tenge was drawn. VEON’s annual report does not link these loans to the OLX purchase [6]. Second, which approvals were received and from whom. Third, Verny Capital’s current stake in Beeline Kazakhstan. Fourth, how long OLX Group’s transitional IT services will last.
Separately, the headline. “Deal of the year in IT” is the outlet’s judgment, not a fact: the editors found no comparable list of the year’s deals in open sources, and the sum of $81 million by itself says nothing about the deal’s rank. By the documents it would be more accurate to say: Beeline Kazakhstan, in which Verny Capital is a co-owner, has closed the purchase of OLX Kazakhstan for $81 million.
