Let's start a contest
A big challenge comes from the need for education on the value of distinct, powerful brands – and by extension: good domain names. In Maharashtra, for example, there must be at least 500 companies that use the word ‘global’ as part of their company name. That number does not include STD booths.
The Indian economy’s history of having only a small number of competing (or largely non-competing) firms in each market sector has meant that branding savvy played little role in commercial success. Now that the market is opening up, there are few good role models to show how a smart domain name has helped propel entrepreneurs to commercial success.
A recent survey in the UK found that most owners of small and medium businesses had not given much thought to their domain names—in an economy that has had wide Internet penetration for over a decade.
In India, even among those who see the value of a good brand, there will be a strong tendency to seek out a fresh registration rather than going onto the secondary market. Janta will prefer any random domain extension such as .info or .biz, rather than pay money in the secondary market for a good domain name.
You often see brand decisions (and domain name decisions) being made by promoters or others with little or no understanding of branding principles. Many people would rather clone or imitate a Western brand than hire a consultant to provide brand and domain-name choices that will create long-term competitive advantages in the markets to be served.
Perhaps we could help by having a vote on this forum and then giving out awards for the worst branding and domain name choices by Indian corporates. We could make it an annual contest, with the results reported to major press outlets.
We could also conduct a survey of the IT ministers in the various states to see how many of them have registered their own names as domain names. If IT ministers are not Internet savvy, how can we expect the average babu to show any interest?
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what is the value of .in
