GoDaddy

India is Growth Engine for GoDaddy: James Caroll

Facebook or social media is not competition but they complement our offerings. We offer pure presence, integrated presence and e-commerce on the web for organisations. James Caroll, Senior Vice President International , GoDaddy

The largest registrar in history of internet - GoDaddy with 56 million domains is now expanding the company’s international focus from four countries to sixty. US headquartered GoDaddy forayed with full blown operations in India last year. We recorded great success here as per James Caroll, Senior Vice President International, GoDaddy on a recent India visit. It makes immense sense for small businesses to encompass web presence in today’s hyper connected world,he says.

What is the relevance of GoDaddy in the technology world and how successful has been the journey so far?

GoDaddy is the largest platform for small business((mainly under100 employees) today. We are bigger than our next top ten competitors combined. We have over 12 million customers (and not individual users) who use our service everyday.
Our vision is to radically shift the global economy towards small business by empowering people to easily start and successfully run their business. We offer world class products - right from mail to website builder to e-commerce solutions.
The Customer Care (365, 24/7) is the big differentiator as the customers don’t call us only when they have a problem. We advise  them on features like search engine visibility, email marketing and more. The subscription model helps companies ride the internet bandwagon without paying huge fees for licenses. That’s our value proposition as a one stop shop for SMBs with a  portfolio of over forty products.

Why should small businesses pay for the website when they can create say - a ‘free’ company page on Facebook?

Social is one part of the online juggernaut. GoDaddy Website builder has social media connectors wherein the website can be connected to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Facebook or social media sites are not competition that can serve all the customer needs but they complement our offerings.
For brand protection, companies need website  for a rich and complete engagement with their customers. Our integrated offering helps traffic flows both ways that helps social media presence and web presence. For search too, the company would like to appear in prevalent locations on the web. There is nothing more professional than to have an online entity in terms of a domain name or brand name.

Website has become more of a push route via social media or mobile devices. What new integrated features will make the website relevant in today’s times?

It depends on type of business and the relevance of online presence is mainly for those who are not on the web yet. For a small business, the website helps tehem address a wider customer set. Our customers can utlise features like SEO, SEM, integration with social media. They can also execute secure e-commerce transactions. From GoDaddy perspective, we offer pure presence, integrated presence and e-commerce on the web.
Companies often do business with an organization that has an official website or a domain that further reflects a sense of professionalism.

After the initial year of India operations, does the report card show first-class grades?

India represents a great opportunity for GoDaddy and GoDaddy is in turn is leveraging the oppurtunity to serve this unique market to enable more small bushiness  to go online. Identified as the priority market India is now GoDaddy’s biggest international office.
The diverse market helped us to tweak our offerings to be more relevant for small businesses. India is the growth engine for GoDaddy. After success in this market, we have launched aggressive international plan by providing offerings in local languages across different countries.
India team has almost tripled in terms of employee strength within the first year.We are here for the long term  to help small business grow their presence on the web.

The website market is highly fragmented in terms of large companies, web designers and web developers. Wasn't it a challenge to create brand loyalty?

The entry barriers are extremely low in this market. Hence the plan is to interact, engage and build the market with the end customers to be successful. Also there is a general perception that creating and managing a website is a complex and time consuming task.
The ‘Cup of Coffee’ campaign across major Indian cities few months ago was a door to door initiative with small businesses. Their website was set up by GoDaddy team within 30 minutes flat (the average time to sip a cup of coffee) in real time. They might not have a PC but they got instant web presence through the mobile device.

India is a huge, diverse and internet connected market. Any key leanings?

There is a combined market for both – DIY (Do It Yourself) and DIFM (Do It For Me) in India. We also learnt having a customer care in India where the agent speak local language - is an essential element for success. Today we have over 100 agents in the customer care centre based out of Hyderabad.
India is the third largest internet connected market of the world but it is only ten percent penetrated. That’s a colossal opportunity and we will ensure that we are there as a leading vendor when that shift happens.