The Works

| 2005 |

India spINs a World Wide Web

A domain name is your passport to the World Wide Web and domains with the suffix ‘.com’, ‘.net’ and ‘.org’ have dominated the internet over the last decade. Then a paradigm shift took place on February 16, when India spun its own web and opened up its ‘.IN’ Top Level Domain name to the world. Within the first hour, a staggering 24,000 ‘.in’ names were registered by people all over the world. Since then, the demand for the ‘.in’ domain names has been phenomenal.

In an exclusive study, MELVYN MISQUITA has, over the past three weeks, scoured hundreds of ‘.in’ domain names -- names that are connected to Goa, India and in general -- that have been registered since February 16 and has come up with interesting findings. For instance, did you know that ‘panaji.in’ has been bought by a person from Switzerland? Or that another man has bought as many as 13 ‘.in’ domains of Goa’s most popular surnames?

But have these ‘.in.’ domain names been bought for personal/official use or are they simply bought only to be re-sold at a steep price to interested customers? These are some of the issues raised in an indepth focus on the ‘.in’ domain names, an area that has generated instant world wide interest.

Goa.in, gone: Goan d-names ‘.in’ big demand

What’s ‘.in’ a name? Plenty, if one goes by the huge ongoing demand to buy ‘.in’ domain names -- the Top Level Domain (TLD) for India -- for websites and email addresses.

And Goa-related domain names too have been logging numerous hits on the cash registers, with e-names resembling Goan places and surnames in big demand all over the world.

Ever since National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) -- the designated registry for ‘.in’ domain names -- opened up the process of registering ‘.in’ domain names to the public on February 16, there has been a flood of registrations. At present, a second-level ‘.in’ domain name is priced at about Rs 800 per year, while the third level domain name (such as ‘.co.in’ or ‘.org.in’) is priced at about Rs 400.

The rush for ‘.in’ domain names can be gauged from the fact that prior to February 16, only 7,000 ‘.in’ domain names had been registered during the last 10 years. However, as many as 75,000 ‘in’ domain names were grabbed by people all over the world between February 16 and February 21.

There have been claims that many domain-name investors -- commonly known as cyber-squatters -- will buy ‘.in’ domain names only to sell them later to interested customers at a higher price. But while some readily admit to domain investment, others insist that the choice to buy Goa-related ‘.in’ domain names are legitimate and purely in public service.

While the second level TLD name ‘goa.in’ -- like other names reserved for use by the government, constitutional bodies and the official registry -- has been blocked by the government, the third level domain name ‘goa.co.in’ has been bought by Jeffrey Williams of Chiangmai-Thailand.

Moreover, Goa’s capital city has also been struck off the ‘.in’ domain list, as ‘panjim.in’ has been bought by Philippe Theriault of Montreal in Canada. But what about ‘Panaji’, the official name of Goa’s capital? Check it up and you’ll find that ‘panaji.in’ has been registered to Richard Eigenheer of Geroldswil in Switzerland.

When this writer contacted Mr Eigenheer to find out if he had booked ‘.in’ domain names of other Goan towns, Mr Eigenheer replied: “There are other names of Indian Towns (not in Goa) wich are registered on my name as ‘.in’ domain.”

Mr Eigenheer readily admitted that he purchased the ‘panaji.in’ domain name for economic gains. “Why I purchased the name ‘panaji.in’? I see it like an investment. Instead of speculating in stocks, I buy domain-names, they are unique and in some time, there will be no more left. And I hope that I can sell them in a few years,” explained Mr Eigenheer.

“I live in Switzerland where we have the countryspecific-domain ‘.ch’ for several years. By now, every city/town in Switzerland has its own homepage about itself like berne.com/berne.ch, geneva.com/geneva.ch, ‘zurich.com’ (‘zurich.ch’ is used by the insurance-company Zurich),” informed the domain-name investor.

“There where some cities, who forgot to reserve their name to the domain ‘.ch’, like Olten for example. I just read an article in a Swiss newspaper a few days ago, that the city of Olten had to buy the domain-name ‘olten.ch’ from the man that reserved it for CHF 50,000 (approx US$ 35,000).” he added.

To a query, Mr Eigenheer declined to specify the resale value of the ‘panaji.in’ domain name. “I cannot tell you what rate I would sell it for (‘Panaji.com’ and ‘Panaji.info’ are for sale also). I just can tell you that I just saw that someone is offering ‘bhubaneswar.in’ for US$ 7,000,” said Mr Eigenheer.

And by the way, the d-name 'goan.in' is now owned by Rajat Todi of Kolkata. An NRI based in USA, Mr Todi, PhD, said he along with some friends had collectively taken few domain names such as ‘goan.in’, ‘diet.in’, ‘worldcup.in’, and few other ‘.in’ domain names.

“Since ‘goa.in’ could not be taken, we decided to apply for ‘goan.in’. We purchased the ‘goan.in’ domain name to develop a portal for Goa where Goans and tourists can find all the information all the time. I am not interested to sell the domain name,” informed Mr Todi.

Describing the ‘.in’ domain name as “a big opportunity to grow in this budding market,” Mr Todi said: “A good domain name may not need huge cost to market, hence the value of domain name.”

Mr Todi, who mainly focuses on website design, development and deployment, explained that his business model is based on collaboration. “I am looking for people or companies who are excited about developing portals just as ‘Goan.in’ or ‘Worldcup.in’ on partnership basis,” says Mr Todi.

Others have booked Goa-related ‘.in’ domain names which strike a common chord in other parts of the country. For instance, the domain name ‘vasco.in’ has been registered to Joy Antony of Kochi-Kerala.

When contacted, Mr Antony, who is presently working in Riyadh-Saudi Arabia, explained that the purpose of ‘vasco.in’ was mainly to “make site on Vasco-da-Gama, the great sailor came to Kozhikode, Kerala in 1498. I have registered some .in domains including ‘vasco.in’, ‘agriculture.in’, ‘chemicals.in’, ‘kerala.in’, ‘mango.in’, ‘farmer.in’, ‘orchids.in’, ‘horticulture.in’, ‘emerald.in’, etc.

Mr Antony admitted that if he were unable to build the ‘vasco.in’ website, he would consider selling it to Goans and others.

According to Mario Alvares, proprietor of Porvorim-based software and webhosting firm Alvares Infotec Pvt. Ltd, he registered about 12 ‘.in’ domains for both the company and its clients.

Mr Alvares said he opted for the ‘.in’ domain names “mainly because of the ‘Indian’ identity to it. Plus it’s a chance to register domain names that were already reserved in the more common .com/.net/.org domains.”

“We were not able to get ‘goa.in’ domain name as it was already reserved by the registrar. From our recent experience, most of our customers are opting for “.in” domain names although the pricing is on the higher side as compared to regular “.com” domain names,” informed Mr Alvares.

“None of our Goa-related domain names are for resale even though we have been offered some attractive figures for some. We plan to develop each of them into unique websites mostly for free community usage and link them together at ‘goenkar.com’,” Mr Alvares added.

The Name Game: How it works

The d-investor will buy domain names with two main plans in mind. Under Plan A, the d-investor buys domain names (for example: ‘misquita.in’) for an annual fee of Rs 800 per domain name. The d-investor then waits for people interested in ‘misquita.in’ to offer a special price to buy the domain name. If the price is attractive, the d-investor will sell the ‘misquita.in’ to the buyer, else the d-investor will wait for the next potential buyer. In this way, the d-investor stands to earn a high amount from one domain name, but the investor can only sell one domain name to one customer.

Under Plan B, the d-investor buys domain names (like in Plan A), but has no plans to re-sell them to potential customers. The d-investors will use the domain names, say ‘misquita.in’, to introduce premium services. For instance, the d-investor could set up a personalised email service, so that persons such as Melvyn Misquita and Colin Misquita could pay a small fee and buy personalised email addresses ‘melvyn@misquita.in’ and ‘colin@misquita.in’ respectively from the d-investor. In this way, the d-investor may earn a small amount from each email address, but the investor has the ability to attract many potential customers for a single domain name.

2 Mumbaikars buy over 90 Goan, 
Indian d-surnames

From D’Souza to Tendulkar and from Fernandes to Gandhi and Tagore, two enterprising ‘.in’ domain name investors from Mumbai have grabbed over 90 domains of the most common surnames from Goa and the rest of the country.

Since the ‘.in’ domain names were made open to public on February 16, Rickson Rodricks of Borivali and Mukesh M of Bandra have pounced on the surnames of national leaders, cricketers, film stars and politicians, besides a whopping 14 of Goa’s common surnames.

The domain surname (d-surname) ‘dsouza.in’ has been taken by Mukesh. “I have bought some domain names for a venture that I am not at liberty to discuss at the present, until things are more ‘in place’ at my end. They are not for resale,” Mr Mukesh told Herald, to a query on the purpose of purchasing the ‘dsouza.in’ domain name.

According to available records, Mukesh owns at least 32 other d-surnames. They are ‘aggarwal.in’, ‘arora.in’, ‘basu.in’, ‘bhatia.in’, ‘chawla.in’, ‘chopra.in’, ‘das.in’, ‘doshi.in’ ‘gupta.in’, ‘joshi.in’, ‘kapur.in’, ‘kaur.in’, ‘khan.in’, ‘krishnamurthy.in’, ‘krishnan.in’, ‘kulkarni.in’, ‘kumar.in’, ‘lal.in’, ‘malhotra.in’, ‘mittal.in’, ‘patel.in’, ‘pillai.in’, ‘ramaswamy.in’, ‘rao.in’, ‘saxena.in’, ‘shah.in’, ‘shaikh.in’, ‘soni.in’, ‘tendulkar.in’, ‘thakkar.in’, ‘verma.in’ and ‘yadav.in’.

Okay, so the popular Goan d-surname ‘dsouza.in’ is gone. What about other Goan surnames such as Fernandes, Pereira or Rodrigues? If you happen to bear one of Goa's more common surnames and if you'd like to own a popular .IN domain name for your website, you could forget about that as well.

For, the domain names ‘dcosta.in’, ‘dsa.in’, ‘dias.in’, ‘dsilva.in’, ‘fernandes.in’, ‘gomes.in’, ‘gonsalves.in’, ‘lobo.in’, ‘naik.in’, ‘pereira.in’, ‘pinto.in’, ‘rodricks.in’ and ‘rodrigues.in’ are all in the hands of Rickson.

If you think that’s a lot, hold your breath. Rickson also owns other popular ‘.in’ d-surnames ‘banerjee.in’, ‘bhat.in’, ‘chowdhury.in’, ‘dalal.in’, ‘dasgupta.in’, ‘ghosh.in’, ‘guha.in’, ‘gujral.in’, ‘hazare.in’, ‘kapoor.in’, ‘kaul.in’, ‘lahiri.in’, ‘mahadevan.in’, ‘mehra.in’, ‘mukherjee.in’, murthy.in’, ‘nair.in’, ‘nayak.in’, ‘parag.in’, ‘parekh.in’, ‘pawar.in’, ‘puri.in’, ‘rai.in’, ‘roy.in’, ‘sehgal.in’, ‘sen.in’, ‘sengupta.in’, ‘sheikh.in’, ‘swamy.in’, ‘tagore.in’ and ‘thakur.in’.

And how could Rickson forget the cricket icons? Included in his over 57-name list are the d-surnames ‘bedi.in’, chauhan.in’, ‘dravid.in’, ‘gambhir.in’, ‘ganguly.in’, ‘gavaskar.in’, ‘kumble.in’, ‘manjrekar.in’, ‘mohanty.in’, ‘mongia.in’, ‘prasad.in’, ‘shastri.in’, ‘sidhu.in’ and ‘wadekar.in’.

Besides owning 13 Goan d-surnames, did he buy any other Christian and Hindu surnamed .IN domain names? “Yes, there have been others bought, but not many, because working alone, I did not have access to unlimited resources,” Mr Rodricks told Herald.

When asked why he opted for Goan-surnamed ‘.in’ domain names, Mr Rodricks said: “The intention is to provide an email service to people. To be truthful to you, I did not target Goan surnames, just some general Christian names. It is a pleasant fact, that most Christians find themselves at home along the lovely beaches of Goa.”

To another query on whether he would sell these Goan-surnamed ‘.in’ domain names to Goan families, Mr Rodricks insisted that he did not intend to sell the names. “Of course running a business like providing free email services, is not cheap. To make up for it, there may be some advertisements, or premium services for a low fee, but none of the names were registered for re-selling intentions.”

“We have already received nearly a dozen proposals, from people all over the world, who are interested to purchase our ‘.in’ domain names. And we have rejected all so far, including an offer of Rs 30,000 for 'Gandhi.in'," informed Mr Rodricks.

“Though my business is not for a social cause,” adds Rickson, “and yet free, it’s a service I would like to profit from in the long run, if people pay for premium services on their email address.”

“To prove that I only did the registrations for my project you will see that all the names I have are just surnames,” justifies Rickson.

For the record, two Goan d-surnames are not in the hands of either Mukesh or Rickson. While ‘kamat.in’ has been registered to Markus Wild of Germany, the d-surname ‘misquita.in’ has been bought by this writer.

Foreign hold ‘.in’ d-names

Imagine an investment of Rs 800 yielding you returns as high as Rs 30,000 within a few days. A new form of investment, commonly known as ‘cybersquatting’, involves the act of registering a popular internet address with the intent of either selling it at a steep price to its rightful owner or using it as part of premium services.

Aware of the possibiliy of reaping a rich harvest, a number of d-name investors -- many of them foreigners -- have already bought ‘.in’ domain names with the hope that their investments will be sold at a premium to interested parties.

Given below are some of the common ‘.in’ domain names that have been registered by foreigners. Note the high concentration of d-investors from Germany and USA, the two largest webhosting countries in the world.

On cyber-squatters

Countries like Australia don't allow you to register the ‘.au’ domain unless you have an Australian business number or the Australian company number. The National Internet Exchange of India (NIX) failed to create awareness before opening up the ‘.in’ domain. As a result, Indians were not as aware as techies in the US and Germany, the two largest webhosting countries. Many foreigners are merely investing in the ‘.in’ domain names to sell them later. -- Kishore Tarachandani of Dots and Coms, a webhosting company from Vadodara.

"Indians and foreigners got information from the same source. If Indians missed out, it is their fault." -- Ruchir Gupta of Webmasters India

"All domain names, except those which have been reserved for use by the Government, constitutional bodies and the registry, are open for registration on a first-come-first-served basis. This is a standard global practice. The registry cannot get into the business of verifying applications.

It is not as if disputes will not arise on names in due course, but they will have to be addressed by a dispute resolution body which will include a set of arbitrators. NIXI, along with the Government, is in the process of putting in place a mechanism for dispute resolution and a policy on universal dispute resolution is being finalised." -- Amitabh Singhal, Acting CEO of National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI)

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