The Profitability of Indian (.in) Domains

With .in and .co.in domains recently going on sale, Many people have been putting down the value of domains with an Indian TLD extension, Anyone missing out on these domains is leaving money on the table.

With this in mind, you might want to consider the following facts:

1. India is currently the second fastest growing economy in the world bar none. China is the premier but India’s growth is set to far outpace China’s in coming years, making it the fastest growing economy in the world by a long shot.
2. With China, language will always be a barrier. English is the first language in India. The educated population are taught English before any other language (including hindi, urdu etc). A lot of people dont know this.
3. Western culture is a huge influence over there. The kids love Metallica, wear designer labels, eat at KFC/McDs, watch american tv shows on satellite, use mobile phones etc. India is not a third world country and anyone who thinks it is, need to move with the times.
4. India contains the largest pool of highly qualified coders, programmers. designers and computer technicians as just about anywhere else and remember that Bangalore is bigger than silicon valley for volume. Investment from US companies such as Microsoft and Apple is absolutely huge and keeps on coming.
5. Outsourcing jobs from the west to India has become a huge industry. More money invested in projects there, pour money into the Indian economy and this results in a better paid, wealthier population/companies and more money for business and therefore higher prices paid for domains.
6. There are more websites on the internet designed for, by or in India than any other kind of website. Even so, the india web is fairly under developed at this stage but once india has its better internet connections and broadband things will fly a thousand fold.
7. India is the worlds largest democracy and is considered to be a true democracy even comparable some western democracies. Also in many respects India is on side, is a major ally and is well positioned for trade with the west.

Put this all together and you have a MAJOR recipe for a hot domain market. I think a lot of the people who are buying into indian domains right now already know all this but some people still need to be told because its still not too late to pick up awesome domains (.in or .co.in for that matter).

Much will depend on how the Indian government deals with corruption and whether they can effectively distribute the funds to solve some of their problems like poverty, infrastructure etc but basically India is well placed to soar. Roughly 80% of the registrants of current .in domains are from India, Germany, and the United States which shows just how big they have grown ever since the relaxation of registration rules that was brought into place in early 2005. Many people see the .in domain as an asset for it’s uniqueness and memorability in the user’s mind which may help strengthen brands, whereas others say that it would only feed the .com of a site more type-in traffic due to other TLDs not having complete power over the user’s mind like the .com has. Whatever the outcome, the popularity of .in domains is doubtful to fade and it seems as if they are here to say, not only have they made ICANN and the Indian goverment money, but those who exploited them correctly have also been earning well.