Telegram is a cross-platform instant messaging app founded in 2013 by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov and his brother Nikolai Durov. Known for its speed, security, and rich feature set, it has surpassed 900 million monthly active users worldwide. It supports end-to-end encrypted chats, self-destructing messages (read-and-delete), cloud storage, large file transfers (up to 2GB), and the creation of groups with up to 20,000 members and channels with unlimited subscribers. It is widely used for personal communication, community management, and information dissemination.