“GoDaddy is No.1 in .in space”

Nikhil Arora, Vice President and Managing Director at GoDaddy India, talks about how their platform is contributing to making Indian business digital.

Nikhil Arora, Vice President & Managing Director, GoDaddy India

This year GoDaddy completes 5 years in India, what is new in GoDaddy?

We have completed 5 years mark in the country and we are No.1 in .in space. GoDaddy has made significant inroads in India over the last five years, resulting in strong brand name visibility and resonance with customers. We have touched 750,000 customers here. In numbers, we have grown 38% of last year and in terms of the new customer acquisition Indian market is the fastest growing one.

We are continuously expanding our platform and services. So far we have increased our customer base as well as agent base in the market. With at least 400 agents our mission is to our customers the best tools, insights and the people to transform their ideas into .in space. We are not only restricted in tier 1 cities but we have also announced localization strategy into 3 new local Indian languages Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, focused to unlock opportunities that India’s linguistic diversity presents and increase internet uptake among SMBs in India by eliminating the language barrier. Recently we have expanded hosting services with the launch of Business Hosting platform in India.

What is your Go to Market Strategy?

GoDaddy is a cloud platform dedicated to small, independent ventures. We are focusing on smaller business; we want to make life easier for small business from migration till completion. We also do lots of field work to understand their needs and then we designed solutions around their problem areas. Our strategy is based on 4 pillars; they are:

Digital Awareness: We are driving the awareness of online presence through marketing, news campaigns, and case studies etc. So entrepreneurs can understand the system of going online and its benefit.

Customer Service: Customer care service is on our priority list. We have a big network of agents who get 4000 calls a day. Do It For Me (DIFM) is a concept behind our customer care service, where our team gets involved with customer till setting up.

Partner Ecosystem: GoDaddy’s trajectory is clear and our momentum is strong. Our customers’ and partners’ success is and will continue to be our success. We have launched new Customer Engagement Program to work closely together with partners, to build solutions to help our customers and partners grow their ventures.

And the 4th pillar is Relevance to the local market. We try to design and build solutions that are easy to use and relevant for even small traders. For example, we have the solution with which any layman can build a website in just 30 minutes.

What sorts of businesses are approaching you, Have you mapped them?

Our business is a mixed bag. There is the number of segments which are approaching us. We are getting traction from tier 2 & tier 3 cities as well as I mentioned earlier that we have launched our solutions in regional languages also. There are traditional businesses who wanted to expand and go online.

The other segments are e-commerce and startups and well-established businesses are also our customers. We do not generally break our customers specifically by vertical. However, we map them by lifecycle, hereby lifecycle I meant to say are they online or offline. But we are seeing more traction from tier 2 & 3 cities mostly.

What are the specific solutions for SMEs?

We have launched several products recently, one is in just 39 Rs/month only. This solution is for small business that can give them complete professional look. GoDaddy’s Business Email is a professional email solution designed to help small businesses in India with secure, custom email accounts that can be accessed from any desktop or mobile device.

While other solution is GoDaddy’s new Website Builder and is available in four different pricing options following a one-month free trial. It comprises of a mobile-optimized website builder with an integrated set of marketing and e-commerce tools. It is easy to use and affordable, and enables a small business, to design a fully functional and professional website in just under an hour with no technical expertise, even using their smartphone.

GoDaddy has also established a new Customer Engagement Program built on core principles of engaging and partnering with customers to deliver awesome experiences. The program serves as an advisory council to facilitate product, marketing and sales feedback, in order to help better meet customer needs, while spotlighting customer businesses and experiences across various social channels. Also when we launched vernacular solutions for smaller businesses our 40% calls were shifted immediately for those solutions.

Right now I am focusing and meeting my customers on ground level as a small business have lots of problems and I am trying to involve deeply with them to understand them and make India relevant products.

How you check the websites and domain being hosted by your customers are genuine or not?

Oh yes! we work with a big team for that. Any domain which is being hosted undergoes several criteria and security check, there is a strict process for that. And if anything happens or there are any violations we take immediate actions as we work with law enforcement agencies.