DotBrand Readiness in the Indian Subcontinent

All things being equal, in two years’ time we will be gearing up to start the application process for the second application round of the new gTLD programme. For global brand holders this is an opportunity to apply for their own slice of Internet infrastructure, joining a group of organisations who made an application back in 2012 when the previous round was last open.

In the last application round just over 600 dotBrand Top-Level Domains were applied for from approximately 500 organisations. Despite its rapid growth in digitalisation, the Indian sub-continent was under-represented in the first application round in terms of dotBrands, with less than 10% of applicants coming from the region.

However, the landscape has changed significantly in the past decade with over 500, billion-dollar companies now based in the Indian sub-continent. Many of these organisations could see the benefit from a dotBrand application, creating compelling usage scenarios and risk-free applications for their clients.

For instance, Indian bank SBI has been one of the leading lights in active usage of their dotBrand, migrating the online banking operations for over 440 million customers to their more secure dotBrand infrastructure. The Bank’s success in using their own TLD is a great example for other organisations in the Financial Services industry of the benefit of a dotBrand application.

In conjunction with Indian Domain and Brand Protection company, LdotR, Com Laude has reviewed dotBrand usage from first round applicants from the Indian sub-continent and looks ahead at some of the compelling reasons why organisations may consider an application in the forthcoming second application round.

The clock is now ticking and organisations across the globe are already starting preparations for their dotBrand applications, working with domain name experts such as Com Laude and LdotR.