Go Daddy Enters The Indian Domain Name Market

Business Standard did a piece on Go Daddy’s attempt to enter the Indian domain name market. India is a priority market for GoDaddy and even though India currently has only 3.5 million domain names currently, the country has huge potential to go online, says the domain names registrar.

“GoDaddy, an US-based domain name registrar and web hosting services provider, which entered India in mid-2012, is increasing its efforts to bring more small and medium businesses (SMBs) online in the country, according to India vice-president and managing director Rajiv Sodhi.”

“India, which is on the cusp of Internet growth, though only 10-12% penetrated, is a priority market for us. There is a huge potential in the country to come online,” he told Business Standard on the sidelines of DomainX, an international domain name conference. Go Daddy was a sponsor at the DomainX domain name conference.

“GoDaddy, which has a global domain names portfolio of over 55 million, has its India headquarters in Gurgaon and care centre in Hyderabad. Nearly as old as the Internet itself, 30% of all Internet currently runs through GoDaddy.”

“The company’s mission was to radically shift the global economy towards small businesses, Sodhi said, adding that GoDaddy’s idea was to bring SMBs online, and make sure that they had good identity, presence and growth.”

“At present, over 70% of our customers are SMBs. We are driving awareness among SMBs on why they should come online and the benefits that they would get by doing so,” he said.

Country code top-level domains (TLDs), like .Bharat domain name in devanagri script launched by the National Internet Exchange of India (Nixi), are evolving in India, said Anshul Goyal, co-founder of Domain Name Owners’ Association of India (DNOAi).

“Such local TLDs, however, will pose many challenges such as legal disputes related to domain names. DNOAi is providing a platform to various stakeholders, including investors, entrepreneurs and tech-savvy innovators, and creating awareness including legal nuances to tackle the disputes related to domain names,” he said.