As a technology enabler for small businesses in India, GoDaddy is driving this segment towards starting, maintaining, and growing their online presence with a keen focus to ensure the affordability issues for such organizations.
The company’s firmly believes in moving with a channel partner focused strategy which take its end product to the consumers and help GoDaddy in reaching out to them and educate them on the inherent benefits that the latest in Internet technology has to offer. Rajiv Sodhi, Vice President and Managing Director, GoDaddy India speaks with Zia Askari from ChannelDrive.in about the company’s current focus and its future plans for India.
What is the big focus for GoDaddy in India?
As the world’s largest technology provider for small businesses, GoDaddy aims to make the Internet relevant for small business owners. We want to help them understand how having a domain name, website and email address that together promote their business online, can help enable them to attract more customers and run their businesses 24/7.
We believe that by establishing an online presence, small businesses can expand their reach to a global audience, increase brand awareness, operate around the clock, and ultimately increase sales. In India, we are focused on:
Educating small businesses on how easy and affordable it is to get online and the benefits of getting a website
Continuing to improve our products and services by keeping them simple and easy to use
Providing helpful customer service through our 24/7, local customer care centre located in Hyderabad.
What kind of growth is the company looking at today in India and where is this growth likely to come from?
India has close to 48 million small businesses and presents the second largest base of SMBs in the world. However, only 600,000 of them are present online. We believe that small businesses will lead the charge for the Internet in India and that’s where the opportunity lies.
Please share some of your challenges today? How do you plan to overcome these?
Many small business owners in India perceive the Internet to be too complex or are concerned that building a website is a massive financial investment in itself. They also may not realize the benefits of having a website on the Internet.
GoDaddy is working to educate consumers and business owners about how easy and affordable it really is to build an online identity. With our latest offer – ‘Get Online Today’, a small business owner can establish a presence for their business on the Internet. Get Online Today package comprises a domain name, subscription to GoDaddy’s website builder and Microsoft Office 365 from GoDaddy for Rs. 99 per month for the first year, with an annual purchase.
Additionally, we are working relentlessly to bring more and more people online. Since our entry in India in 2012, we have released a number of marketing campaigns, all of which aim at driving home the point that a compelling online presence can significantly transform a business. By featuring GoDaddy products and services designed to help small businesses create and manage their business online at attractive prices, we hope that small business owners in India will decide to get started.
To help make the process easier, GoDaddy provides support and guidance to customers at every stage—this is intrinsic to our global and India strategy. We offer our award-winning, 24/7 local customer care where any customer can call our care center and an expert will be available to walk them through the process of creating a website step-by-step.
How do you look at the government’s digital India campaign? What role can GoDaddy play in propagating the ‘Digital India’ campaign?
One of the most important pillars of Digital India programme is providing high speed broadband connectivity pan India.
With the capability of broadband connectivity available to more people around India, this will present more opportunities for small businesses to get online, and help sell their products and services in India, and to expand their business to new markets around the world.
GoDaddy is committed to help small businesses start, maintain, and grow an online presence for their business quickly, easily and affordably.
Do you engage with channel partners? How important are they to your India strategy?
We believe that India is a ‘Do-it-for-me’ market. Unlike the West, in India customers expect someone to create an online presence for them. Therefore, a robust channel partner ecosystem is integral to our India strategy. Our channel partners are the ones who take our end product to the consumers, help us in reaching out to them and educate them on the inherent benefits that the Internet has to offer.
Our partners and resellers are well-positioned and equipped to offer the right solutions. We work very closely with them to offer the full suite of products needed for small businesses to succeed.
We work with Microsoft in offering Microsoft Office 365 from GoDaddy, bringing enterprise solutions to small businesses. Microsoft productivity products like Word, Excel and PowerPoint help small businesses manage their business by allowing access to files anywhere, while at same collaborating with team members. It’s like having a virtual office for running a small business, keeping in close contact with customers.
We have products and services especially created for Web Professionals, Web Pros. For companies are that are creating websites for small business owners, GoDaddy offers a robust and secure platform to host their client’s websites and tools to help manage the Web Pro’s business. Solutions include dashboard views with CPanel, security monitoring and patching and virtual private servers.
What are some of the tech trends in the digital space that are redefining the way future digital frontier is shaped?
According to a recent IAMAI report, India will overtake the U.S. this year to become the world’s second-largest user base of the Internet, with active Internet users predicted to reach 269 million by June 2015. As a recent eMarketer report suggests, India will see double-digit growth till 2018 in its Internet population – higher than any other country in the Asia Pacific.
As more small business owners recognize the opportunities available when having a presence online with a website, we believe domain name penetration relative to the Internet population is also set to grow. Currently, for India, it stands at just about two percent, in comparison to a more mature market like the U.S. where domain name penetration is upwards of 20 percent.
Additionally, we believe that new gTLDs will spur the culture of domain buying for personal and professional use in India and around the world. With over 700 new gTLDs set to be released this year, we will have more businesses and individuals looking to establish their Internet identity to showcase their talent/ services or even find more customers online. New gTLDs such as .GURU, .SHIKSHA, .PHOTOGRAPHY offer businesses newer and more innovative ways of branding themselves while reaching out to more relevant customers. This, we believe, is a trend for the future.
