In contrast to the above post, I would say that over the last year, most of the new entrants into the ITeS field in India that I have seen have not bothered to even register one domain name, regardless of extension.

With the availability of free email services from Gmail and Yahoo, and with the availability of free sub-domains on Web 2.0 platforms such as Ning, hard-charging startup guys see less of a need now to spend the money on a domain name.

The issue of branding seems even less important now to janta than a year back. We have a lot of work to do, if this situation is to change. Personally, I see that shame works better than guilt.