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Nov 3, 2011

India, Get Your Business Online !

Google has started giving free websites to Indian small and medium enterprises.

Context: 
India is the world’s 2nd biggest mobile phone market with about 870 million. Internet penetration is about 100 million, or less than a tenth of a country of 1.2 billion, still making it the world’s 3rd-biggest Internet user market. 8 million small and medium businesses, of which about 400,000 have a website and 100,000 have active online presence.



What the Indian enterprise gets...
  • Free, easy-to-build, professional website
  • Free .in domain name and hosting for one year
  • Free email addresses
  • Free 365 days support
To register, the enterprise need...
an identification document, either a permanent account number, or a tax deduction account number or a corporate identification number. 

After the first year, the enterprise would have to pay a nominal charge if they wish to renew their domain name.

I think this is a neat initiative. Of course Google would have a business plan behind, ranging for years to come. They do have the investment muscle, so why not? Opening internet up for small and medium enterprises is a clever move. Wish we also had this for Sri Lankan enterprises.

1 comment:

Amitha Amarasinghe said...

I believe for Google, India is a sizable market to do such category development work.

In Sri Lanka, we shouldn't expect Google to do such things but I've always been dreaming about some local company (particularly from telco category) come forward and do such a thing.

Instead of that, what we see is companies trying to skim profits from already converted market (Colombo & Sub urbs) by fighting to grab a share. How about all these broadband companies and hardware vendors get together and initiate such a project to bring rest of the Island online?