A Complete, In-Depth Guide to VKR Holding — Its Founder, Its Mission, Its Global Brands, and Why VKR Holding Is One of the Most Remarkable Companies in the World
There are companies that exist to make money. And then there are companies that exist to make the world genuinely better — and happen to be very successful while doing it. VKR Holding is firmly, unmistakably in the second category.
Most people in the world have never heard the name VKR Holding. But almost everyone in the developed world has benefited from what VKR Holding does. If you have ever sat in a room filled with warm, natural light streaming through a roof window, or opened a skylight to let in a breath of fresh air on a summer morning, you have most likely experienced the work of a company that VKR Holding owns. That company is VELUX — and VELUX would not exist without VKR Holding.
This article is a complete, honest, and detailed look at VKR Holding — who they are, what they do, how they started, what they believe, and why VKR Holding is one of the most thoughtfully run, genuinely principled companies on the planet today.
What Is VKR Holding?
VKR Holding is a Danish holding and investment company headquartered in Hørsholm, just north of Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1941, VKR Holding owns some of the most important building component companies in the world, with a primary focus on bringing daylight, fresh air, and a healthier living environment into homes and commercial buildings everywhere.
The name VKR Holding comes from the initials of its remarkable founder: Villum Kann Rasmussen — an engineer, inventor, and philanthropist who changed the way humans live inside buildings, and who left behind not just a thriving global business but a philosophy of corporate responsibility that remains, to this day, more relevant and more inspiring than almost anything written by any management consultant anywhere in the world.
VKR Holding is a family- and foundation-owned company. It is not listed on any stock exchange. It does not answer to outside shareholders chasing quarterly profits. Instead, VKR Holding answers to a set of values established by its founder more than 60 years ago — values that prioritise doing good for society, treating people with exceptional care, and building products that genuinely improve human life.
At its core, VKR Holding owns two world-class operating groups: the VELUX Group, which is the global leader in roof windows and skylights, and the DOVISTA Group, which specialises in vertical windows and exterior doors for the European market. Together, these two groups form the commercial engine of VKR Holding, generating revenues of 30.7 billion Danish Krone in 2025 — a remarkable performance in a challenging global market for construction and building components.
VKR Holding‘s headquarters are located at Breeltevej 18, 2970 Hørsholm, Denmark. The holding company itself operates with a lean, highly expert team of approximately 65 professionals with skills spanning investment, mergers and acquisitions, accounting, tax, legal affairs, intellectual property, communications, and architecture.
The Founder Who Started Everything: Villum Kann Rasmussen
To truly understand VKR Holding, you must first understand the man behind it — because everything about VKR Holding, from its products to its values to its philanthropic foundations, flows directly from one extraordinary human being.
Villum Kann Rasmussen was born in 1909 and grew up on the Danish island of Mandø, a rugged, wind-swept place whose natural beauty shaped his worldview from childhood. He earned his structural engineering degree in 1932 and immediately began approaching design and construction the way a great scientist approaches a hypothesis — with curiosity, experimentation, and a deep conviction that every existing solution could be improved.
His personal philosophy was simple and brilliant: “One experiment is better than a thousand expert views.” Over the course of his life, Villum Kann Rasmussen filed 55 patents and 9 designs in Denmark alone — the output of a mind that never stopped asking whether things could be done better.
On April 1, 1941, amid the turbulence and darkness of World War II, Villum Kann Rasmussen founded V. Kann Rasmussen & Co. in Copenhagen, specialising in glass roofing. His very first project was a 900-square-metre glass roof for a flax mill in Aarhus, Denmark, secured using his own TUBUS glazing bar patent. Later that same year, he was commissioned to install roof windows in school lofts that were being converted into classrooms — and it was this commission that sparked one of the most significant product innovations in the history of architecture.
Villum was determined, in his own words, to “once and for all make a skylight — a roof window — that in every respect was just as good as the best vertical window.” That determination led directly to the creation of the VELUX brand.
In 1942, the very first set of VELUX roof windows was delivered to Slagelse Vestre School in Denmark. The windows featured wooden frames, zinc cladding, watertight seals, and condensation drains — making them durable, weather-resistant, and easy to maintain. And on the invoice for that first delivery, Villum hand-wrote a name he had just invented: VELUX — combining “VE” for ventilation and “LUX” for light. The name was trademarked on October 3, 1942. That moment was the birth of what would become one of the most recognised building products brands in the world.
Villum Kann Rasmussen continued innovating relentlessly. In 1945, he filed a patent for the PV-45 pivot hinge — a revolutionary design that allowed roof windows to rotate fully, making them easy to clean from the inside. Patented in 1949, this design became one of the most popular roof windows in the mid-20th century and set the foundation for VELUX’s global success.
Villum passed away on August 24, 1993, and was buried near his childhood home on Mandø island. He left behind a thriving international business, two powerful philanthropic foundations, and a philosophy of corporate purpose that VKR Holding still lives by every single day. His legacy is not just what he built — it is the spirit in which he built it.
VKR Holding’s History: Eight Decades of Growth, One Consistent Mission
The history of VKR Holding is the history of a company that grew steadily, thoughtfully, and with extraordinary consistency of purpose across more than 80 years.
The 1940s and 1950s were the years of invention and first expansion. From the first VELUX roof windows delivered to a Danish school, to the establishment of the first VELUX factory in Østbirk in 1946, to the company’s first international venture in Germany in 1952 — VKR Holding‘s early DNA was defined by a willingness to experiment, build, and reach beyond borders. The VELUX brand name was trademarked. The iconic pivot hinge was patented. And the first vertical window was developed, later renamed VELFAC, which would go on to become a renowned brand in its own right.
The 1960s brought a defining moment in VKR Holding‘s corporate philosophy. In February 1965, founder Villum Kann Rasmussen wrote what he called the Model Company Objective — a mission statement that articulated, with stunning clarity, how a company should operate if it truly wanted to be good for the world. More on this remarkable document shortly. The 1960s also saw the launch of the iconic VELUX GGL roof window in 1968, which introduced a full-width control bar, improved pivot hinges, a ventilation flap, and the company’s own insulated pane — winning the Danish Design Award in 1973.
The 1970s brought Villum’s son, Lars Kann-Rasmussen, into a growing leadership role — and brought the creation of two philanthropic foundations that would become central to VKR Holding‘s identity. The Villum Foundation was established on December 21, 1971, followed by the VELUX Foundation a decade later. These foundations were designed to reinvest business profits into science, technology, social welfare, and environmental causes — ensuring that the wealth generated by VKR Holding flowed back into society in meaningful ways.
The 1980s were the decade of global expansion. After establishing itself across Western Europe in the 1950s and 60s, the VKR Holding group pushed into new continents — opening operations in Australia in 1980, Japan in 1981, and Chile in 1983. Even more boldly, by 1986, VKR Holding was one of the first Western European companies to establish a presence in Eastern Europe, forming a joint venture in Hungary three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. This was visionary, courageous international business leadership.
The 1990s brought the passing of Villum Kann Rasmussen in 1993, and a renewed, formalised commitment to sustainability under Lars Kann-Rasmussen. In a 1992 article in the company’s own employee magazine, Lars made clear that VKR Holding would build its future on sustainable production, circular economy principles, and products that were as kind to the planet as they were useful to people.
The 2000s brought major structural consolidation. In 2001, the VELUX Group fully acquired its German operations after a nearly 50-year partnership with the Albers family came to a close. VKR Holding also expanded its vertical windows and doors business significantly during this period, acquiring companies including Rationel in 1998 and Svenska Fönster in 2000, eventually grouping these brands under the DOVISTA Group. Between 2008 and 2011, VKR Holding built eight demonstration buildings across Europe to showcase energy-efficient “Active House” designs — a tangible, physical commitment to sustainable architecture.
The 2010s saw another leadership transition. In 2010, Lars Kann-Rasmussen stepped down as Chairman after decades of stewardship and modernisation. In 2016, the third generation of the family, Mads Kann-Rasmussen, was appointed CEO of VKR Holding A/S. Mads holds a degree in economics, an MBA from Copenhagen Business School, and studied at IMD Business School in Switzerland. He previously worked as a consultant for Boston Consulting Group before joining the VKR Group in 2001.
The 2020s have brought VKR Holding‘s boldest step yet into the future — the establishment of KOMPAS, an independent venture capital fund focused on sustainability and technological innovation in real estate, construction, and manufacturing. Launched in 2021, KOMPAS represents VKR Holding‘s commitment to investing 1 billion Danish Krone into technology start-ups developing breakthrough solutions for a more sustainable built environment.
The Model Company Objective: A Philosophy That Changed Corporate Thinking
Of all the things that make VKR Holding unique, perhaps none is more remarkable than the Model Company Objective — a short document written by Villum Kann Rasmussen in February 1965 that articulated a vision of corporate responsibility so clear, so human, and so ahead of its time that it reads today like something written last week rather than six decades ago.
In 1965, the idea of a company formally committing to the wellbeing of its customers, employees, partners, and the planet — in writing, as a governing principle — was essentially unheard of. Most companies in 1965 were focused purely on production and profit. Villum Kann Rasmussen was thinking about something entirely different.
The Model Company Objective states:
“The purpose of the Group is to develop a number of model companies, which cooperate in an exemplary manner. A model company works with solutions useful to society and treats its customers, partners, employees of all categories, shareholders, and the planet better than most other companies. A model company makes a profit which can finance growth and maintain financial independence.”
This single paragraph contains more genuine corporate wisdom than most entire management textbooks. Notice what it says: profit is important — but it is a tool for growth and independence, not the purpose of the enterprise. The purpose is to be useful to society and to treat every stakeholder exceptionally well. VKR Holding has lived by this objective for 60 years, and it shows in everything the company does.
Being a Model Company, in VKR Holding‘s own words, means developing products that benefit society, bringing natural light and fresh air into homes, giving back to the societies in which the company operates, engaging respectfully with every stakeholder, and managing natural resources responsibly. Since 2016, VKR Holding has formalised this commitment further by becoming an active participant in the United Nations Global Compact, aligning its operations with the UN’s Ten Principles across human rights, labour standards, environmental responsibility, and anti-corruption.
VKR Holding’s Two Core Brands: VELUX and DOVISTA
VKR Holding is the owner of two world-class building product groups, each a market leader in its segment. Together, VELUX and DOVISTA represent the commercial core of VKR Holding‘s mission to connect buildings with nature.
VELUX — Bringing Light and Air Into Homes Worldwide
The VELUX Group is the flagship business of VKR Holding and one of the most recognised brands in the global construction and building products industry. VELUX is the world’s leading manufacturer of roof windows and skylights — products that transform dark, unused attic spaces and flat roofs into bright, comfortable, liveable rooms filled with natural daylight and fresh air.
The VELUX product portfolio is extensive. VKR Holding‘s VELUX Group offers pitched roof windows, flat roof skylights, modular skylights for commercial buildings, and a comprehensive range of accessories including blinds, shutters, and smart home automation solutions. VELUX smart home products include sensor-driven systems and remote controls that allow homeowners to manage their indoor climate intelligently — automatically opening windows when CO2 levels rise, closing them when rain is detected, and integrating with broader home automation platforms.
VELUX is sold in markets across Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and South America. The brand’s combination of engineering excellence, design quality, and genuine functional benefit has made VELUX the default choice for architects, builders, and homeowners who want to bring more natural light into a building without compromising on energy efficiency, weatherproofing, or aesthetics. Every VELUX product manufactured under the umbrella of VKR Holding is designed with both the user’s comfort and the planet’s health in mind.
DOVISTA — The European Leader in Vertical Windows and Doors
The DOVISTA Group is VKR Holding‘s second major operating group, and it specialises in vertical windows and exterior doors for the European market. DOVISTA was built through a series of strategic acquisitions made by VKR Holding in the late 1990s and early 2000s, bringing together some of Northern Europe’s most respected window and door brands under a single, unified portfolio.
DOVISTA’s brand family includes VELFAC, the pioneering vertical window brand originally developed by Villum Kann Rasmussen himself; Rationel, acquired by VKR Holding in 1998; Svenska Fönster, acquired in 2000; and several other distinct brands serving different market segments and distribution channels across Scandinavia and Northern Europe.
DOVISTA products are manufactured in wood, wood-aluminium combinations, PVC, and composite materials, giving architects and homeowners a wide range of design, performance, and price options. The DOVISTA Group serves both the B2B market — selling directly to construction companies, developers, and architects — and the B2C market, reaching individual homeowners through retail and specialist channels. Like VELUX, every DOVISTA product reflects VKR Holding‘s commitment to quality, energy efficiency, and the health of indoor living environments.
VKR Holding’s Financial Strength: Solid Performance in a Challenging World
VKR Holding delivered a solid financial performance in 2025 despite challenging conditions in global construction markets. The VKR Group reported revenues of 30.7 billion Danish Krone for 2025, with an EBITA margin of 12.5% and a profit for the year of 3.7 billion Danish Krone. Revenue grew through a combination of strategic acquisitions and proactive commercial initiatives across the group’s business areas, allowing VKR Holding to maintain operating profit broadly in line with the previous year.
In the words of Hans Martin Smith, CEO of the VKR Group: “Overall, I consider the result satisfactory. This is not least due to the many talented employees across the organisation, and I would like to extend a big thank you to all employees who delivered an extraordinary effort in a challenging year.”
What makes VKR Holding‘s financial model particularly distinctive is its ownership structure. As a family- and foundation-owned company with no public shareholders to answer to, VKR Holding is free to take the long view on every decision it makes. It does not need to maximize profit in any given quarter. It does not need to cut corners on quality or sustainability to satisfy Wall Street. It simply needs to build great products, serve its customers and employees well, and generate enough profit to reinvest in growth and fund its philanthropic foundations. This long-term ownership model is one of the key reasons VKR Holding has been able to maintain its quality, its values, and its consistency across more than 80 years.
KOMPAS: VKR Holding’s Bold Bet on the Future of Sustainable Construction
In 2021, VKR Holding made one of its most forward-looking moves in decades — the launch of KOMPAS, an independent venture capital fund focused on sustainability and technological innovation in the real estate, construction, and manufacturing sectors.
VKR Holding has committed to investing 1 billion Danish Krone through KOMPAS into technology start-ups developing breakthrough solutions to transform the built environment for a more sustainable future. VKR Holding serves as the cornerstone investor in KOMPAS, which operates as an independent fund targeting top-quartile financial returns alongside genuine sustainability impact.
KOMPAS represents VKR Holding‘s recognition that the future of construction will be shaped by technology — robotics, sensors, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, circular economy platforms — and that VKR Holding wants to be at the forefront of that transformation, not watching it from the sidelines. By combining deep industry expertise with venture capital investment, VKR Holding is positioning itself to shape the future of the industry it has been part of for over 80 years.
VKR Holding’s Philanthropic Foundations: Profit With Purpose
One of the most distinctive and admirable aspects of VKR Holding is the central role that philanthropy plays in its corporate identity. VKR Holding does not simply pay lip service to social responsibility — it has built the act of giving back into the very legal and financial structure of the company.
The Villum Foundation, established by Villum Kann Rasmussen on December 21, 1971, and the VELUX Foundation, established a decade later, are both designed to reinvest a significant portion of VKR Holding‘s business profits into charitable activities that benefit society and support sustainable development. Over the decades, additional foundations have been established, including the Employee Foundation of the VKR Group, VELUX Stiftung in Switzerland, the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation in the USA, and the KR Foundation.
These foundations fund initiatives in science, technology, social work, environmental causes, and education — channelling the commercial success of VKR Holding into lasting, meaningful contributions to human wellbeing. This philanthropic architecture ensures that the success of VKR Holding benefits not just its owners, but society as a whole.
This is not accidental — it is by design, and it reflects the deepest conviction of VKR Holding‘s founder: that a company’s purpose is to be useful to the world, and that profit is a means to that end rather than an end in itself.
The People and Culture of VKR Holding
VKR Holding is a company of approximately 65 professionals at the holding level, with expertise spanning investment, mergers and acquisitions, accounting, tax, legal affairs, intellectual property rights, communications, and architecture. This relatively small, highly specialised team oversees a global group of companies with tens of thousands of employees worldwide.
The culture of VKR Holding is shaped directly by the Model Company Objective. It is a workplace built on flexibility, inclusivity, and genuine wellbeing — a place where employees are treated not as resources to be optimised but as people whose professional growth and personal fulfilment matter deeply to the organisation. VKR Holding‘s commitment to meaningful work and charitable endeavour is woven into the daily culture of the company, creating an environment where people feel that what they do genuinely matters.
VKR Holding is also a place of intellectual and architectural heritage. The company’s original headquarters is now home to the VILLUM Window Collection — a museum housing 300 historical windows from the 17th century to the present day, exploring the window’s profound impact on the quality of human life through light, air, and views. It is a fitting tribute to a founder who spent his entire life thinking about how buildings could connect people more richly with the natural world.
The Living Places Project: Connecting Buildings With Nature in the 21st Century
VKR Holding has always believed that great buildings are not separate from nature — they are an extension of it. This conviction has driven the company’s research and demonstration building projects for decades, from the eight energy-efficient “Active House” demonstration buildings built across Europe between 2008 and 2011, to the VELUX Model Homes 2020 project, to the most recent and ambitious experiment of all: Living Places, launched in 2022.
Living Places is VKR Holding‘s most sophisticated attempt yet to show the world what a building that truly connects its inhabitants with the natural environment can look and feel like. The project brings together natural light, fresh air, sustainable materials, smart building technology, and biophilic design principles into real, liveable homes that demonstrate the future of residential architecture.
For VKR Holding, Living Places is not just an architectural experiment — it is a proof of concept for the company’s entire mission. If VKR Holding can show that buildings can dramatically improve the health, comfort, and happiness of the people who live in them — while simultaneously reducing their environmental footprint — then every rooflight, every skylight, every smart window control system, and every energy-efficient door panel that VKR Holding‘s companies sell is part of something genuinely important.
VKR Holding’s Mission Today: Reconnecting Buildings With Nature
At the heart of everything VKR Holding does in 2025 and beyond is a single, clear, urgent goal: to restore the connection between buildings and the natural world. VKR Holding calls this mission “Connecting buildings with nature” — and it pursues it through four specific commitments baked into every product its companies develop and manufacture.
First, VKR Holding is committed to building products that contribute to a lower carbon footprint — designing, manufacturing, and delivering windows, skylights, and doors in ways that reduce the environmental cost of construction. Second, VKR Holding is committed to products that promote a healthy indoor climate — because the air quality and light levels inside a building profoundly affect the health, mood, productivity, and happiness of the people who spend time there. Third, VKR Holding is committed to products that bring nature indoors — connecting people visually, thermally, and experientially with the natural world even when they are inside. And fourth, VKR Holding is committed to products that are increasingly recyclable — moving toward a circular economy in which building components can be recovered, reused, and returned to the production cycle rather than sent to landfill.
These four commitments are not aspirational marketing language — they are operational priorities that shape how VKR Holding‘s businesses design products, choose materials, run factories, and measure success.
Why VKR Holding Matters to the World
Humans now spend more than 90% of their time indoors. The quality of indoor environments — the light, the air, the thermal comfort, the connection to the outside world — has a direct, measurable impact on human health, cognitive function, sleep quality, and emotional wellbeing. Bad indoor environments make people sick, tired, and unhappy. Great indoor environments do the opposite.
VKR Holding is the company most dedicated in the world to making indoor environments better — through the products it makes, the innovations it funds, the buildings it demonstrates, and the values it lives by. Every VELUX roof window installed in an attic conversion somewhere in Europe, every DOVISTA window fitted in a Scandinavian home, every smart home sensor that automatically opens a skylight to flush stale air from a bedroom — all of it is VKR Holding making the invisible, slow, daily improvement to human life that most people will never consciously notice but always unconsciously feel.
That is the deepest truth about VKR Holding: it is not a flashy company. It does not crave attention. Its founder said in 1965 that the goal was to be a model company — not the most famous company, not the most profitable company, but a model. A company that demonstrates through its actions, not its words, what it looks like to do business the right way.
VKR Holding has been demonstrating that for more than 80 years. And the world is a brighter, airier, healthier place for it.
Final Thoughts: VKR Holding’s Legacy and the Road Ahead
From a single glass roofing company founded in wartime Copenhagen in 1941, to an 80-year-old global group generating over 30 billion Danish Krone in annual revenue, owning the world’s leading skylight brand, running a billion-krone venture capital fund, and funding a network of philanthropic foundations that give back to science, education, and the environment — VKR Holding has built one of the most quietly extraordinary corporate histories of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The secret to VKR Holding‘s longevity and integrity is not complicated. It is a set of values written down by one honest, inventive, deeply human engineer in 1965, passed faithfully from one generation of the Kann-Rasmussen family to the next, and lived out every day by tens of thousands of employees in factories, offices, design studios, and sales teams across the globe.
VKR Holding believes that business should be useful. That products should make life better. That profit should serve people, not the other way around. And that the best kind of company is one that does not need to shout about its values — because those values are visible in everything it makes.
In an era when every corporation on earth claims to be purpose-driven and sustainability-focused, VKR Holding is the real thing. It has been the real thing since 1941. And that is a story worth knowing.