Google India has announced a new initiative offering a free one year top-level domain (TLD) registration and website hosting services to small Indian businesses to launch a website.
Photo: a snapshot from www.indiagetonline.in
The process of selecting a domain name, signing up for it and then building and launching the website has been simplified. Every official Indian small business owner can register on the special India Get Your Business Online web site, create a web site with a a ‘.in’ domain name and get a free hosting for on year. The hosting is being provided by Houston-based Web host HostGator, which will also offer free technical support.
Users will also get access to free email addresses through Google Apps and a free Google AdWords coupon worth $51 to get started with promoting their website on Google’s advertising network.
At the end of the first year, the website owners will have the option to renew their domain name and hosting on a paid basis or cancel the service.
According to Google’s statistics, only about 400,000 have an online presence, though the total of small business in India is 8 million. Google’s aim is to double the amount of the internet usage among small businesses.
In addition, Google is partnering with the Federation of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (FISME), which is a non-profit that will “help SMBs get online through direct customer outreach and events”.
According to Reuters, India now has 100 million Internet users, which is less than a tenth of the country’s population of 1.2 billion, but still the third largest user base behind China and the United States. The number is expected to grow to 300 million in the next three years. The smartphone niche is also developing extremely with appearance of affordable models that cost around $100.
«The next 200 million new users will largely be mobile-first users and out of those, 100 million will be mobile-only users,» told Reuters in an interview Rajan Anandan, MD & Vice President, Sales & Operations, Google India.
Number of people that go online via smartphones continues to grow. Google has also launched an initiative called GoMo that helps businesses ‘Go Mobile’ which will help businesses customize their web sites for mobile phones.
