Internet domain registrar and web hosting company, GoDaddy is betting big on the small and medium businesses in India. The company intends to enhance the online presence of over 51 million SMBs in the country by offering them its hosting solutions.

GoDaddy will launch a new Business Hosting, a solution designed for SMBs that helps SMBs seamlessly migrate their share hosting site to a new platform that offers features of virtual private server with the simplicity of a share hosting platform.

GoDaddy offers cloud-based solutions to help SMBs get online and grow their ventures. Its product lines include share hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated servers and managed WordPress platform that allows businesses run the websites. The company recently launched ‘Website Builder’, a mobile-optimised solution with an integrated suite of online tools that eases the website building for small businesses.

Business Hosting is the second offering from the company slated for the launch in 2017 and will be unveiled by the end of May. Designed to provide dedicated resources, faster than shared hosting for small businesses, Business Hosting helps high traffic sites like online stores and sites for developers and creative agencies to easy upgrading solution with a single click.

“When small and medium businesses grow fast the share hosting platform proves to be not enough for them. Therefore, we have come up with a platform called Business Hosting, where with one button click they can migrate their share hosting site to a new platform that has all the power of a virtual private server with the simplicity of a share hosting platform. This solution has proved to be very successful in the US and we are bringing it to India soon”, said Raghu Murthi, Senior Vice President – Hosting, GoDaddy.

India hosts about 51 million small and medium businesses, however, only 12 million of them are IT-ready and have an online presence. A significant reason for the low website penetration is lack of education about the significance of online presence and the constraints of budget and technical skills. Hence, a large number of SMBs turn to web designers and developers to build and maintain their websites, firmly establishing India as a do-it-for-me (DIFM) market. GoDaddy is focused on the DIFM market and intend to tap the potentials in the DIFM space though web pros and resellers. The company has rolled out the ‘Pro Program’ to support the web pro community with the right set of tools to support their customers.

“India is the great market for us and today we are hosting a large number of customers in the country. We are focused on growing the hosting and domain market in the country by bringing web pros, developers and designers together to bring SMBs on the online platform so that they can increase their chances of success,” said Murthi.

In a bid to unlock the potentials in the regional markets, GoDaddy recently announced its localization strategy to reach out to the Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets. Currently it offers services in four Indian languages from its Customer Care Center based out of Hyderabad. According to the company the Customer Care Center is the fastest growing department within the country and it receives over 3,000 calls per day.

“We at GoDaddy believe that it is important to educate SMBs on the importance of going on online platforms. Our aim is to educate small businesses on what the internet can do for them. Our strategy is three-pronged and we are focused on educating small businesses to get online, continuing to improve our products and services and providing the best customer service through our local customer support”, said Murthi.

According to the company, India is one of the strategic markets for GoDaddy. According to National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) the company holds significant market share for .IN in India. It’s total India customer base stands at more than 750,000 as of March 2017. Talking about the key thrust areas in 2017, Murthi said that the company would continue to focus on its customer support arm. GoDaddy also intends to launch integrated security services for secure websites.

Headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz. USA, GoDaddy is the world’s largest ICANN-accredited registrar, with about 71 million domains under management and 17 million customers globally. The company employs around 5000 employees, including 3700+ customer care pros and with a presence spanning 56 markets and serving customers in 29 languages and 43 currencies.

Source: cxotoday