Thread: McDonald's India Opts for Indian Domain

From what I can tell, McDonald's India is opting for an Indian domain to promote its online food ordering service which is due to launch in India next month.

McDonald’s has had to innovate its way through India: Vegetarian fare, home delivery, breakfast menu, extended hours and so on. As a result, the McDonald’s model in India looks very different from anywhere else in the world. Most of these steps have added incremental revenue. The company is now all set to launch its web-based delivery service in March.

It looks like the new website is McDelivery.co.in. This is good because I notice that McDonalds India has never even used McDonalds.in even though it has owned this domain since 2005. It still prefers to use McDonaldsIndia.com and McDonaldsIndia.net (to date, the McDelivery phone order service has been promoted at McDonaldsIndia.net/McDelivery).

Whois shows that McDelivery.co.in is owned by one of the companies that's helping to manage McDonalds India. The company must know a bit about domains.

According to the terms on the McDelivery.co.in website:

You may receive a confirmation call from our restaurant soon after you place an online order with us to ensure that the information provided by you online is accurate.

In other words, they want to avoid prank orders.

It's interesting that they opted for the .co.in rather than the .in (they own both).

Many Indian & multi national companies used PPC program in India and it is managed by third party. Generally third party company register new name behalf of parent company and run PPC.

Here in McDonalds case could be franchise wants to use online option for local area rather that India or Mumbai.

Originally Posted by Ceres

Whois shows that McDelivery.co.in is owned by one of the companies that's helping to manage McDonalds India. The company must know a bit about domains.

According to the terms on the McDelivery.co.in website:

Thanks for this new piece of interesting news Ceres. I'm still seeing big businesses use .co.in rather than the .in and this makes me realize we can't underestimate .co.in as an extension.McDonalds using .co.in is huge and its joining a lengthening list of companies already using .co.in to brand themselves in INdia.

I think its generalized that the corporates usually opt for .co.in. There would be many more to join this list .