Domain Empire

.in Reasons behind MASSIVE GROWTH in the .IN extension

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Now before I start to give my opinion on the Indian extension, I wish to convey the fact that I am definitely NOT trying to hype up the .IN scene to propagate my own portfolio or investments, which many people often believe when domainers make positive comments on certain extensions. Although I must say that I am the owner of a fair few nice .IN names, I feel that I am quite behind with .IN and therefore playing catch up on pretty much a daily basis now through hand regs and buying on reseller market, trying to build up a decent portfolio of .in at reasonable prices, before its too late. Many strong key (and clever) players have been in the .IN game for many many years, secretly trading amongst themselves and waiting for the explosion that is about to occur in the next few months.

I started investing in .IN a few years back but it has only been over the last couple of years, that I have realized the true potential in this amazing extension. Many years ago, I had initially thought that .in was only good for domain hacks, with quite a few companies all over the globe buying .in names primarily for only that purpose ( many still do) and not even thinking about the traffic from India but I only fully realized a couple of years ago that I was very wrong about .in and wished that I had got in much earlier and I think that the Chinese are also realising that now too.

I am sure you are all aware of the recent rapid momentum with NNN.ins & LLL.ins which are showing growth at an unprecedented speed, prices increasing on a daily basis. This shows the potential of .IN and also a precursor of what is going to happen in the coming months. And in a matter of speaking, I guess it is already starting to happen right now as we speak, with more and more end users buying .Ins and interesting being sparked all over India and globally too. After rapid increases in NNN.ins & LLL.ins sparked by the Chinese, then will come massive increases in sale prices of .IN keywords, which are already becoming hot property in India right now anyway.

The .IN extension is definitely the future of the Indian Webspace and the market is starting to move extremely fast at this moment in time, some very exciting times ahead! Not sure if you guys have been keeping up to date with the news, but over the last few months, there has been some very big news about the Indian webspace market. Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce company, raised $6 Billion in total venture capitalists, and $1 Billion just last year and the company is now valued at $15 Billion. This funding figure matches facebook’s fundraising back in 2011 and makes it the third largest deal of its kind in the world!

Also during the same week last year, Amazon announced a $2 Billion investment in its India unit and has recently stated that India is the next ‘Trillion Dollar’ market, stating that the size of opportunity in India is so large it will be measured in trillions, not billions!

There are many excellent figures for India's internet entrepreneurs from the commitment and faith in India of the larger firms & global corporations. There have been many such multi-billion/million deals last year and this year seems just as exciting, if not more. There are also major rumors now that Walmart's entry into Indian e-commerce is very imminent! Things are starting to move extremely quickly over there and the market is about to mature to a completely new level guys! Just yesterday, the Prime Minister of India launched a $1.5 Billion fund for new startups. India truly is on the cusp of a digital revolution. Mobile phone subscriptions in the country have already passed the 1 Billion mark and these are now quickly being replaced by smartphones. This is pretty much a once in a lifetime moment, and the prime minister has stated that “the transformation occuring is on a scale that is, perhaps, unmatched in human history”.

The changing landscape in India is now moving at neck breaking speed. Internet access has rapidly expanded and the Reliance Group is due to make a move by summer of this year that will totally change everything in India, with EXTREMELY cheap access to 4G! Already mostly through mobile devices, Indians are now increasingly shifting daily activity online, like reading the newspaper, doing bank transactions and buying goods and services, from shoes to refrigerators etc….

Nowadays in India, billboards, text messages and emails bombard people every day with news of deep online-only discounts and special offers. By June, more Indians are expected to access the Internet on their cellphones — 371 million — than the entire population of the United States! And we are just talking about cellphone internet connections here, not even including the other initiatives in fixed line, fibre optic, cable connections etc…

Just this week, an indian firm just released a smartphone that is priced under 500 rupees, less than 5 USD (1% of the price of the latest Apple iPhone). The current median in India age is 27, nearly a full decade younger than in China!

E-commerce in India is growing at a compound annual rate of 34 percent, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

By next year, many experts agree on the fact that there will be half a billion Indians online. India has already surpassed the USA in terms of number of users. A flood of cheap smartphones in the market is encouraging rapid internet adoption and an online revolution is taking place. Unlike the other BRIC countries such a China, Russia and Brazil, the consumers in India are largely Anglophone which means that as Indians become the second-largest nationality online (after the Chinese), they simultaneously will become the single largest group on the English-language internet. A vast majority of them using the English language as the preferred way to communicate online!


On top of that mobile increase, fibre optic subscribers through the Indian government's NOFN project are likely to reach over 600 million by 2020! With average Internet speeds in India set to triple over the next couple of years, this is going to be the LARGEST MARKET in the world and it will all start kicking off towards sometime this summer!



India is the worlds largest democracy and has the second largest population of English speakers in the world. It also currently has the world's largest youth population. In total the population of India is equivalent of more than the populations of Europe and the US combined! Just think about this sort of opportunity guys!

Just literally a few months ago, Japans richest man (owner of SoftBank) invested $627million in an Indian web company and stated that is had plans to invest $10Billion over the next couple of years due to the vast market potential of India.



India's population has now crossed over the 1 billion mark, more than half of its population are younger than 25 and nearly 70 percent of its 1.25 billion population is under 40. Therefore in absolute numbers, this is actually unprecedented anywhere in the history of the world. It also comes at a time when much of the developed world and also China have aging populations. Overall, India will overtake China as the largest population in the world before 2030. At the current growth rate, India will easily exceed 600 million internet users by 2018 or much before that. This will make India the biggest open internet access market in the world and therefore this is the place to capitalize on some serious growth. And remember guys, India is the largest DEMOCRACY in the world, and that word democracy is what is changing the minds of Google, Twitter, Facebook, Uber etc…to start moving away from China and more into India.

India is also set to overtake the U.S. as the world's largest Facebook market by number of users before the end of this year, which already at over 135 million users, is the only country specific market in the world where Facebook is aspiring to have 1 billion users, nowhere else are they or can they even aspire for this guys. It was literally just a few months ago that Zuckerberg met with Modi to discuss the push forward of internet useage in India and has been in India yet again to push his ideas. Discussions are always continuing with the top web corporations and the politicians of India, to push forward Internet useage in the country.

India added 100 million new users to the Internet in 2015, taking the country to more than 400 million users -- more than there are residents of the US. But with another 800 million yet to be connected, the world's biggest tech companies are eager to be a part of India's consumer tech boom in the next few years. Between Google last month beginning its mission to hook up train stations around India with free Wi-Fi and Facebook's controversial Free Basics initiative, which will give limited e-services to the poor at no cost, expect the numbers to only accelerate. In 2015, smartphone sales in India eclipsed those in the US for the first time ever, according to Counterpoint Research. China remains the world's largest phone market, but it's nearing saturation point, with growth stalling in 2015 for the first time. The US is a similarly tough nut to crack, with 79 percent of people already owning smartphones, according to ComScore.

Due to these statistics and current initiatives and business projects taking place in this country, India is of course set to shortly become the largest population of web users in the world!

I realize guys that many of you may primarily be involved in .COM and you may ask that although India is rapidly becoming a massive user base in the online world, why would the users move to a cctld like .IN rather than .COM or another of the many new/old extensions? My belief is that .COM is becoming slightly saturated or which I why I chose .IN over .COM when concentrating on ROI.


Of course, I believe that .COM is still CURRENTLY king globally and will be king for a long long time, there is no denying that. I personally started off in domaining over 12 years ago with primarily .coms, .orgs and .nets. I now have no .coms in my portfolio and have also sold most of my .nets and .orgs too to generate enough funds to buy into .IN which I believe is the next big thing for sure! .Com is great for primarily international/USA traffic, but Google has a local search site for many individual countries, for example Google.ca for Canada, Google.fr for France & Google.co.uk for the UK. These local search engines tend to give priority to local domains and Google in India will tend to give priority for .IN extensions when end users are searching for specific items. Therefore IF any major corporation is interested in gaining traffic from INDIAN customers then they will need the .IN extension to further this cause and create a highly ranked online portal to their store/services through the Indian webspace, which now many of them are already doing. I know that algorithms are continually changing and take into account many more other factors than this, and I may not be completely correct in my understanding. But using the .IN extension to start operations in India is a growing market and many global/Indian corporations are already doing this. .IN is now the primary extension for India and is unbeatable in generating traffic for businesses through the web whom want to capitalize on India’s enormous population. 



Most companies based within India are using .IN sites as their primary websites and redirecting their .com sites to the .IN ones and having been doing so for many years now. Also, many international companies are already using .IN sites as their primary portals for Indian originated specific traffic and then transferring into their .com sites or even just using the .IN sites as their primary sites over there, built specifically for the Indian market. Most international companies use ccTLDs in this manner and they are not just bought as a defensive move to protect their trademark and name, although this is definitely also a major advantage of owning all important extensions of a brand in new major emerging markets. Also another great stat is that the IMF have concluded that the total size of the Indian economy is set to surpass that of Japan and Germany combined by 2019.

Again, why not .com for Indians? Well .com is still used by Indians and it always will be just as it is still used by Germans or the British. But INDIAN users do often prefer the .IN extension over .com, unless of course they are specifically looking for products or services that are based outside of India. This is similar to markets such as the UK in which .co.uk is the predominant extension used, German market where .de is used over .com unless looking for global services etc.....Yet India is even more nationalistic than most of these other countries and in a similar manner to China, Indians always prefer to use INDIAN identifiable services & options due to long established trust and pride in their country and this is exactly why the .IN extension is prime real estate for the Indian webspace. It is also the preferred extension that is being pushed by the Indian government and that is exactly why many are now investing in .IN names.



Guys, im sure you're pretty much up to date with the current marketplace anyway but yeah go ahead and check out the statistics for yourself in regards to India and i'm pretty sure that you'll agree with me when I say that it is going to blow up in a massive way! All of these stats that I have mentioned can be verified on many established global business/news sites with a simple google search.

There's literally $Billions currently being poured into the Indian Webspace and Indian Internet usage right now, every single western/global company is dying to get in and many Indian companies are racking up their arsenal as we speak. The newly formed government is extremely pro-digital and the word on the street is that they are going to quickly start easing out a lot of national policies, making it easier to carry out business/services online. This already occurred yesterday in the start up sector.

I'm not sure if you guys are aware of what occurred just over a decade ago in relation to the telecoms industry over there but it went absolutely crazy and led to a full on price war in relation to tariffs and mobile phone products, which led to India rapidly becoming the number two country of the highest users of mobile devices in the world (soon to become number one). Yet this time, the rate of growth is expected to be more than triple that in relation to web usage, smartphone adoption ect.... Extremely cheap 4G with subsidised smartphones, tablets is expected to be rolled out on a national scale in 2016 by major companies such as Reliance ect.....

The number of end users in India is already set to surpass the number in USA, and we've not even reached the quarter way point in terms of the size of population in India.

The major western corporates are already betting big on India and by the end of the year, it'll be far too late to get in on the game as many old school players would've already got a foothold on the major keywords and won't be letting go for spare change. I myself wish I had go in earlier on the .IN game. BUT there is still massive opportunity RIGHT NOW, as it is STILL a buyer’s market which I don’t believe will be the case in one years time!
And since the market is on the cusp of exploding in India and I know the potential worth of these names in a year or two time will be immense.



Guys, you have to realise that by 2018, India will have twice the number of Internet users as the US does and has already overtaken the US in terms of number of user at the end of last year. Of course the market will take a while to fully mature, but in sheer advertising potential alone, this is amazing! And plus the speed of adoption nowadays both in web services and ecommerce is incredibly fast!
India already at this moment in time has over 400 million internet users, which is nearly 17 times the full actual population of the country of Australia guys. And as I write this email this very moment, India is adding 1.25 millions internet users to the web every single week which is nearly 180,000 new unique users of the internet per day! By the end of today, another 180,000 users would've come online and have started searching for things on the web and the same will happening again tomorrow, and the day after and the day after that....ect..... Those figures are just too wild to ignore! Yes of course, all of these users are not mature users as in the west, they will not all buy lots of items on through the web, they may not all spend hours on the web every single day BUT these aspects are rapidly changing and these users are quickly changing their habits and many are starting to replicate our habits here in the west.

Once an Indian picks up a smartphone, they will never go back! I think that investors in the web game tend not to pay too much attention on new emerging markets in the beginning, always instead looking towards .com & the western markets which I believe have now started to slowly saturate in terms of growth. Why buy up in Beverly Hills when there is no further growth happening there? When instead we can look at a new neighbourhood that is growing beyond all expectations and will soon be the new Beverly Hills of the East! The time is now, the buyers market is now! I don’t think investors here should miss out on this chance! Obviously no one here will take this information as gospel, so therefore I request anyone whom finds all of this interesting, then please research into this for yourself and I am sure that you will find that adding some nice .ins into your portfolio NOW rather than later will be a good financial decision. B-)
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Do 90% Indian's have their Business Online?
Do 98% Indian's know there is also a business exist in the world called Domaining?
 
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Very few indian businesses have their own websites, many mps do not have an email id listed online
 
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@dnk That is what I want to say. Comparison of GDP of China and India shouldn't be only factor for .IN growth.
 
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Things are moving forward at a nice stable speed. I just do not think that there is a ccTLD that can even remotely compare to the potential of .IN right now. The future ROI with .IN is looking extremely promising.

Sedo have a special auction .IN june. And the digital india project is quickly becoming one of the Indian government's top priorities, as per below links:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...to-new-digital-india/articleshow/58727170.cms


https://sedo.com/uk/sedo/premiumdotinauction/
 
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I was asking some Indian domainers regarding .in and they all told me that they did not bother. That end users in India preferred .com and that there was only an investor market and only foreigners invested in .in.

So how many of your guys are actually Indian?

How many of you made .in domain name sales to end users and how large where they?
 
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I m from India.
I don't think end users preferred only .com They also preferred .in
I bought some .in but not to sell. I want to develop them.

only foreigners invested in .in.
That is almost correct.
 
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How many of us are Tuvalians.
 
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How many of us are Tuvalians.

How many sellers you see trying to sell .tv based on the geo economic outlook for Tuvalu?

Cause I see lots off .in sellers telling me about the geo economic outlook of India and how it will affect .in prices not based on it being a word or hack. Like .tv sellers would.
 
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How many sellers you see trying to sell .tv based on the geo economic outlook for Tuvalu?

Cause I see lots off .in sellers telling me about the geo economic outlook of India and how it will affect .in prices not based on it being a word or hack. Like .tv sellers would.

Nobody does business in/with Tuvalu but Verisign.

Many foreign end users buy .ins. To do business in/with India obviously. As such India's economic growth matters.
 
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So what? You know about the American market? Its fairly large and affluent. .Us must be a great buy then?
 
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So what? You know about the American market? Its fairly large and affluent. .Us must be a great buy then?
America's .us IS .com, but what are India's practical options considering 1).com is already highly exploited and 2) .com is very expensive(and many Indians are price sensitive)?
Doesnt the investor market usually precede the end user market for most extensions? Yes .in is still at an early stage(which is the right time for nay sayers and skeptics to actually jump in),but there is a strong chance .in will boom and grow well.

Finally, if you actually think .IN is really not worth much, how about you demonstrate it? bring out some cash, go shopping for good .in domains and find out how little your money gets you(esp. for an "irrelevant extension"). If we can call a domain/extension cheap but cant actually buy those cheap names, then its not actually cheap.
 
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That's why companies working on US market buy .coms. They know that in the US they need .com, in India they need .in
 
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I was asking some Indian domainers regarding .in and they all told me that they did not bother. That end users in India preferred .com and that there was only an investor market and only foreigners invested in .in.

I would say to make an informed decision and just not buy into hype.


Here's some researched data for you to get an idea -

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/IN

http://trak.in/india-startup-funding-investment-2015/

Similarly, further research might help you draw a even better conclusion.

I guess the data points out that .com is established, .in is in the nascent stages but what happens next would largely depend upon a lot of factors(automation, exports, job creation etc. etc.) that influence the Global and Indian economy in general in the near future.
 
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All valid points. However I would tend to value opinions from the native domainers higher than foreign investors. Hence the reason me asking how many of you are Indian. Seems one came forth and to a degree agreed with the feedback I had from other Indian domainers. Rest of you sort of come of as hypsters. Only little offence meant.
 
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Many native domainers will say that .in is great investment and that they invested in .in. This forum is full of them.
 
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I see. That was what I was expecting. Hence the reason for my surprise when feedback came back differently from my network.

Also the reason I asked them to come forth in this thread. Guess they are letting you guys speak first...
 
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America's .us IS .com, but what are India's practical options considering 1).com is already highly exploited and 2) .com is very expensive(and many Indians are price sensitive)?
Doesnt the investor market usually precede the end user market for most extensions? Yes .in is still at an early stage(which is the right time for nay sayers and skeptics to actually jump in),but there is a strong chance .in will boom and grow well.

Finally, if you actually think .IN is really not worth much, how about you demonstrate it? bring out some cash, go shopping for good .in domains and find out how little your money gets you(esp. for an "irrelevant extension"). If we can call a domain/extension cheap but cant actually buy those cheap names, then its not actually cheap.

This is non nonsensical. Really surprised to see you post this. I have a lot of respect for your opinion and usually tend to agree with your points.

1 and 2: Thats the same for the global market. You see .com cooling off and nTLDs going off like a rocket?

"Doesnt the investor market usually precede the end user market for most extensions?"
No... That might be the case for new extensions since no end user market is present. So the hope is that an end user market will occur down the line. ccTLDs had end users and then investors entered. At least that is the case in Europe where ccTLDs are dominant. Frankly I know of no extension that had a strong investor presence which preceded end user entry. What examples are you thinking off?

"Finally, if you actually think .IN is really not worth much, how about you demonstrate it? bring out some cash, go shopping for good .in domains and find out how little your money gets you(esp. for an "irrelevant extension")"..

I never called it cheap or irrelevant, thats your words. But I dont agree with your point even so. Lets see you bring out some cash and go shopping for "good CHIP 4L.COMs" see how little your money gets you.. Do I think 4L.COM CHIP domains are a good investment based on solid end user business numbers... No.. Its crap and the only value is based on finding another bigger sucker than yourself. Now I am not comparing CHIPs to .ins. Just saying your point is silly.
 
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@promo , I really think that you should go back to the beginning of this thread and read it in its entirety and you will find the answers there as to why .IN should not be compared to .us and other various answers to your questions.
 
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I am an Indian and part-time domainer. I have made plenty of ROI from .in domains. I see the argument that .in investors being non-indians as an indicator of .in not having potential as being flawed. Indians traditionally invest only in gold and real estate. That is only changing in the last decade. On top of that when .in was getting launched domains as an investment avenue did not have much exposure to public , not even to people working in the IT sector. Therefore initial investors have mostly been foreigners. But if you see after market transactions today most buyers are Indians and that too investors. The proportion of indian investors in .in market is increasing
 
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I too am Indian and have complete faith in the .IN extension, its current value and future potential. It is a solid and robust extension which has matured over time since its initial release and has undergone a steady pace of maturation (unlike some other over-hyped extensions) and it is now ripe enough to explode in a massive way due to various factors as outlined throughout this thread.
 
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Seeing that so many people now have a smarthpone, sit in a cafe and while talking they search for stuff on internet, every business will need to have some kind of website (at least to give basic info about it). The bigger the audience, the bigger the market.
 
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@promo , I really think that you should go back to the beginning of this thread and read it in its entirety and you will find the answers there as to why .IN should not be compared to .us and other various answers to your questions.

Thanks for the suggestion. Good to see some actual Indian people answering. I know a bit about .in domains, I bought my first .in domain name in 2006 and have owned a few along the way. As any other name I sold, I sold them with fair to great profit. Currently I do not hold any. I was more wondering regarding the current aftermarket makeup. Seems to me its mostly made up of foreigners as it was back when I was actively buying them.

I am an Indian and part-time domainer. I have made plenty of ROI from .in domains. I see the argument that .in investors being non-indians as an indicator of .in not having potential as being flawed. Indians traditionally invest only in gold and real estate. That is only changing in the last decade. On top of that when .in was getting launched domains as an investment avenue did not have much exposure to public , not even to people working in the IT sector. Therefore initial investors have mostly been foreigners. But if you see after market transactions today most buyers are Indians and that too investors. The proportion of indian investors in .in market is increasing

Yeah well... I did not ask the common Indian man on the street, but 5 highly successful Indian DOMAINERS, that invest in domain names, but have not invested in .in. So they know enough to invest in domains, but dont see .in as a good opportunity. This surprised me as I was going to dabble in some services related to .in names and I was frankly hoping for the opposite reply.
 
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This is non nonsensical. Really surprised to see you post this. I have a lot of respect for your opinion and usually tend to agree with your points.

1 and 2: Thats the same for the global market. You see .com cooling off and nTLDs going off like a rocket?

"Doesnt the investor market usually precede the end user market for most extensions?"
No... That might be the case for new extensions since no end user market is present. So the hope is that an end user market will occur down the line. ccTLDs had end users and then investors entered. At least that is the case in Europe where ccTLDs are dominant. Frankly I know of no extension that had a strong investor presence which preceded end user entry. What examples are you thinking off?

"Finally, if you actually think .IN is really not worth much, how about you demonstrate it? bring out some cash, go shopping for good .in domains and find out how little your money gets you(esp. for an "irrelevant extension")"..

I never called it cheap or irrelevant, thats your words. But I dont agree with your point even so. Lets see you bring out some cash and go shopping for "good CHIP 4L.COMs" see how little your money gets you.. Do I think 4L.COM CHIP domains are a good investment based on solid end user business numbers... No.. Its crap and the only value is based on finding another bigger sucker than yourself. Now I am not comparing CHIPs to .ins. Just saying your point is silly.

No... That might be the case for new extensions since no end user market is present
Replace new with young and i'll agree with you.
Frankly I know of no extension that had a strong investor presence which preceded end user entry. What examples are you thinking off?
All major successful extensions? Because which of them had end user entry first then strong investor presence after?

Lets see you bring out some cash and go shopping for "good CHIP 4L.COMs" see how little your money gets you.. Do I think 4L.COM CHIP domains are a good investment based on solid end user business numbers... No.. Its crap and the only value is based on finding another bigger sucker than yourself. Now I am not comparing CHIPs to .ins. Just saying your point is silly.
4L.com might not have great end user demand, but there's still end users AND "bigger suckers"aka investors who will buy them. They are surely not worthless. People spending their money on it know supply is shrinking+ .com is king, so there is a GOOD chance they can make profit in the future. It seems you only focus on end users maybe? Nothing wrong with that but for me am trying to stay flexible. I've made some money selling to end users and investors, but its till profit, and it allows me to keep buying and selling,which i enjoy. So you basically admit that there is "money" in 4L.coms..but since its not being sold to end users its not good? thats your logic(there is often good profit to make reselling too). My only rule in domaining is not to lose money because thats the easiest and most likely thing to do. you can say my point is silly..am used to that. All i follow are market trends and domain fundamentals.
 
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