IN Registration: Are You .IN It Yet?

Giving an organization an Indian identity has not seemed to attract too many solution providers. Solution providers have preferred to be with their old domain names rather than change them to the exclusive .IN. The initial fizz about having a different domain name, which gives an Indian touch to the company website name, has died down. 

When an article on the same topic was done three months back, of the top twenty-five solution providers mentioned in the DQ Channels Silver Club, only seven had registered for the .IN domain name. Now, of the 18 solution providers, only three more have registered themselves for .IN. They are: Wipro
Infotech, CMC and Tata Infotech.

India or international

The main reason not to go for the .IN domain is that customers are used to a particular URL. On changing it, they may not be able to recollect the new change. G
Balakrishnan, MD, Ontrack Solutions commented, “The company site name, www.ontrackin.com is widely known to people. The publicity material we carry also has the same URL. Thus, we would not like to change the domain name.” 

Omnitech Infosolutions' DD Buch shares a similar view point as he prefers to play safe. “Our corporate URL has gone to a lot of clients and customers. We do not want to take any chances by opting for a new extension,” he cautioned. The company website is updated every fortnight and is an informative one, which is why he all the more feels that the existing domain name should not be dabbled with. 

Buch does not feel that having a .IN domain name will give an added Indian identity even to its international customers. Mathew
Chacko, one of the Directors at Precision Group seconds that. The company's URL is
www.precision.co.in. “I feel .CO.IN is better than having only a .IN domain. The
.CO.IN domain can stand for India in the commercial terms,” he explained. While, for
Balakrishnan, when asked what 'in' stood for in the URL, he said it could stand for India as well as International. 

Mathew also opined that changing the domain name will not make a lot of difference to his business either. In fact, he feels that not enough is told that who would manage the DLS server and the load. “If any technical issue comes up, then will the government interfere?” he asked.

.IN has Indian touch

On the other hand, Nitin Shah of Allied Digital Services has taken advantage of the service provided for an Indian domain identity. The company, along with its existing portal, will launch another customer service, known as
www.allieddigital.co.in. The new URL has the .CO.IN domain name. Sunil Bhatt,
TCO, Allied Digital Services, said that they chose this domain name for the new portal as it would give an Indian identity to their organization and customers would recognize them as an Indian player. 

“Having several customers out of India, we have taken the .CO.IN domain, as it will highlight our Indian identity, which is the biggest asset for Indian in other countries,” remarked
Nitin. But as mentioned above, there are not many who believe that a changed domain name can assert the Indian nature of the company, and bring about significant business revenues. 

Jasjit Sawhney, CEO, Net4India, one of the registrars for .IN domain names, said, “Our assumption that the number of applicants would reduce after the Sunrise period for trademark registered companies was wrong. There were more companies that registered themselves from January 21, 2005 to February 16, 2005.” This was the time when non-trademark registered companies could apply. In the Sunrise period, there were a total of 2,800 registrations that were done by Net4India, while after February 21, 2005, the registrar has been making around 75 registrations per day. Jasjit remarked that the registrations that now happen are more from
SMBs. 

Importance of corporate website

Solution providers do not update the portal very often. That is another reason for going in for a re-haul of the website name. “Our site is more of a corporate brochure. We update it once every six months. Though slowly we plan to update it more often and gradually do that once every month. It is more static a site than dynamic,” said Mathew. 

Also, Ontrack Solutions does not update the site very often, it does that every two months. “I do not feel the need to update it very regularly, as a person would see my site with a specific purpose and not just while surfing it. The information that a prospective customer needs is there,” explained
Balakrishnan. Citing a different case, Omnitech Infosolutions updates the site as often as every 15 days. Yet, it would not like to register with a new domain name.

AMISHI SHAH

MUMBAI