Thread: Jeff Talks About Indian Domains And More

As requested, here's a summary of the podcast:

• With regard to cctlds, Jeff invests in several of them: .in/.co.in, .co.uk and .ca.

• Jeff believes Indian domains have incredible potential. In the 2 years he's been involved in the Indian market, he's seen a lot of growth.

• It's early days for Indian domains, as market really only opened up in 2005.

• Pre 2005, in India there was only .co.in (no .in). .co.in was very difficult to register, very restricted who could register it. However, in Feb 2005, things changed: .in was introduced, and both .co. and .co.in were liberalized:

- no restrictions for registration;
- don't have to be Indian;
- don't have to live in India;
- can push domains within a registrar to somebody else;
- simple to register and to transfer etc

• Some important things about India:

- Approx. 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 people in the whole world live in India.
- Population over 1 billion.
- India is the largest English speaking market in the world. Many people don't realise this, and think of the US as the largest market.
- Most of India's population under age of 35, which is perfect demographic for internet.
- Internet penetration is growing rapidly. Approx. 80 million use the internet (bigger than a lot of European countries). Still a lot of room for internet growth.

• Indian domains market is for long-term investment. Expect to be in it for 3-5 years before you get huge payback. Can still find decent 2-word commercial terms available for reg. Aftermarket prices still cheap.

• India's economy still growing despite world recession. While in some countries economy is contracting, for India the recession just means instead of 8% growth, it's seeing a 6% growth.

• In some countries, local cctld more popular than .com. For example, in 2000 when .ca was liberalised no-one used .ca. Now 9 years later, .ca is the dominant extension.

• Parking or Development?

For Indian domains, Jeff generally doesn't bother parking them. Even if decent traffic, the amount you earn per click is really low. He leaves them or develops mini-sites.

Jeff does park some .co.uk domains. Some of them get decent amount of type-in traffic and earn a decent amount in parking.

• In India, it's not easy to win INDRP (equiv. to UDRP). Flipside is that it's been around for 4 years and there have been less than 100 cases, most of them involved egregious trademarks. There's a right of appeal to INDRP, but legal system in India is slow - looking at 4-5 years - in meantime you still have the domain. There are currently INDRP appeals before the court – the legal system will be clearer once decisions have been made in these cases.

• At recent Traffic cctlds conference, lawyers on legal panel highlighted problems with dispute resolutions in a lot of the countries, not just India.

• Example of domain problems in other countries - US seizure of gambling domains.

• Jeff's impression is that if you have a valuable Indian domain, then it's worth trying to trademark it, as the legal system in India is very deferential to trademarks.

• Advice to those wanting to invest:

- knowledge is power: spend time reading as much as you can;
- look at domain appraisal threads to educate yourself;
- look at sales report, and see what domains are selling and the prices they're selling at;
- start with commercial terms;
- practice selling a few domains.

I didn't cover everything from the podcast, but I tried to pick out the most important parts.

Thank you, Ceres, nice work! And congratulations to Jeff on this great source of information (useful not only to newbies but also to experienced ones). Why is it mentioned that .ca has been liberalised? I thought there were strong restrictions to register .ca names.

Originally Posted by the_poet

Why is it mentioned that .ca has been liberalised? I thought there were strong restrictions to register .ca names.

I assume he's talking about the .ca reform which occurred in 2000. See: Update on .ca Domain Name Reform.

@Ceres - Excellent transcript of the audio. Nice to have it and be able to link to this info.

@Jeff - This might be good as a brief overview sticky if, if in fact something as informative about the current Indian domain market doesn't already exist on site.

For instance, is there a 'media' area of inforum.in? A thread that contains podcasts and videos about the Indian domain market would be nice because I think we'll start to see more of this type of multi-media content start to manifest as time goes on.

Thanks again Ceres!

Originally Posted by PARKS

@Jeff - This might be good as a brief overview sticky if, if in fact something as informative about the current Indian domain market doesn't already exist on site.

Totally quote this.

Thanks Jamie, that's a great idea! I'll set this up.

Looking good, downloading the podcast now