Domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy bets on SMB businesses to drive growth

At a select press briefing in Mumbai yesterday, GoDaddy.com, an internet domain registrar and web hosting company discussed their plans for the Indian market. James Carroll, SVP- international and Rajiv Sodhi, VP & MD – India shared the company’s plans for the Indian market. Worldwide GoDaddy has 12 million customers and 56 million domains that they manage.

The focus for the company in India will be the SMB business, which GoDaddy believes hold the potential to bring in the numbers. GoDaddy started its operations in India last year and have been engaging one to one with customers. The company recently did a one-month marketing campaign ‘Cup of Coffee’ to bring aboard small businesses that did not have any web presence and told them about the benefits of having a website. Done across mass media and below-the-line, the campaign managed to touch about 40,000 businesses through the activity including businesses like cellphone shop owners, beauty parlours and taxi drivers among others.The GoDaddy India office is the biggest office for the company outside of USA, where they are headquartered. “India is the third largest internet market in the world, but it is only 10-11% penetrated so far. That leaves a lot of opportunity for growth,” said James. Among the opportunity is also the new devices that is driving internet consumption in India.

GoDaddy is going behind businesses that have less than 5 employees, which according to Rajiv is the bulk of SMB business in India today – as much as 95%. Rural India is also an opportunity they are looking at. Rajiv also predicted the introduction of new generic top-level domain names(gTLDs) which he says will help business be more focused. Therefore it will be possible for companies to have a .Brandname (eg: .Nike) domain address or a .Geo(eg: .Maharashtra) domain address that can help make the website address even more personalized. Sites that support regional languages and can help the user communicate in language beyond English will help increase further adoption, said Rajiv.

In India, the GoDaddy team comprises 10 employees, who sit in the corporate office in Gurgoan. They also have 100 agents in their call centre setup at Hyderabad. Taking about the USP and differentiation they bring to the table, Rajiv says their web builder product has over 40 different offerings for a customer to choose from – which includes SEO support, email marketing, digital certificates and more. They have also appointed resellers to tap into the large SMB customer base in the country to helping increase GoDaddy’s adoption.