AgTalk | India is a 'value' sensitive market: GoDaddy.com's Sodhi

Technology, as we all know, has grown leaps and bounds over the last decade. From shopping basic ration to luxury and fashion; everything, almost everything is just a click away! However, technology as they say is not everyone’s cup of tea; hence tech companies made it a point to provide enough room for the growth for this probable ‘go-to-place’ for all businesses. A lot of new and well learnt entrepreneurs took this as a platform to service people and grow themselves.

With an aim to simplify the jargoned world, GoDaddy, which asserts to be amongst the world’s largest technology provider had been set up to give people an easy, affordable way to get their ideas online. Today, it has more than 12 million customers worldwide and believes in helping people to easily start, confidently grow and successfully run their own ventures. GoDaddy is based in Arizona, but has facilities in US, Europe, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Asia, India and Latin America and has 35,000+ servers and manages 57+million domain names. This technology provider enables small businesses in building a professional identity online by offering an easy-to-use and end-to-end suite of products ranging from domain name, web hosting, email and marketing tools. In India since 2009, the company offers Indian businesses it’s professed world-class, local 24/7 customer care.

Rajiv Sodhi, MD and VP, GoDaddy is the first-ever international executive appointed by GoDaddy and is responsible for overseeing GoDaddy's expansion into the India market. Hailing from Gurgaon, Sodhi has an MBA and a Bachelor of Engineering degree, specializing in Computer Science to his credit. Sodhi's expertise is with small-to-midsize businesses looking to develop or enhance their online presence. Prior to Go Daddy, Sodhi worked in various roles at Microsoft India dating back to 2001.

Adgully caught up with Rajiv Sodhi, MD & VP, GoDaddy.com to know more about its plan and how they are looking at SMB market.

Adgully (AG): GoDaddy, as we know is a global brand. How according to you is Indian market different from other markets across the world for GoDaddy?
Rajiv Sodhi (RS): Indian market is different market from western world because it is still a market which is in its nascent stage. Even though internet users are growing in the country we are still about to cross 200 million connected users. We are still at 12-13%of the penetration of the total market, so this indicates huge potential. Secondly, India is not a ‘do it yourself market’ like the western world or developed market, but a ‘do it for me market’ where businesses expect that somebody should come to their doorstep and actually offer services which creates loads of interesting challenges. The third thing is that, India is not ‘price sensitive’ but ‘value sensitive’ market; so people are very careful about the ‘value’ they are getting, irrespective of amount they are giving.

AG: What are the products GoDaddy offers in India?
RS: We have over 40 products in India. Go Daddy is the world’s largest provider of Web hosting, domain name registrations and new SSL certificates. We also offer presence and commerce product, business and marketing solutions and other products.

AG: Since you focus on SMB markets, is there any specific category under the radar for SMB’s in India?
RS: When you look at internet options or buying a domain name, or building a website, all these are horizontal solutions. Though there are some vertical nuisances in every industry, as each is different from the other; but internet has benefits for all kinds of industries. So, there is no vertical specific focus that is coming our way anytime soon. We actually encourage people from all areas to come in and take advantage of internet, this making it not very vertical centric.

AG: Tell us about the client base that GoDaddy possess?
RS: Our business is about volume. We have investors who only buy domain names, then we have business owners who build name and website; alongside this, we also work with mature organisations who understand the power of internet and starts from domain name, websites to hosting services with us data and transactions and also E-mail and marketing tool which we offer them. We don’t work with any specific industry.

AG: How are you based in India, and also are your servers too located in India? 
RS: We are based out of Gurgaon, which is our corporate office and Hyderabad is our cure centre where we have over 100 agents who provide services. Though our service centres are present in India, our servers are not in India. We provide successful solutions for India’s small businesses and 24X7 customer support in India.

AG: In March 2014, you launched a campaign featuring Mithun Chakraborty. What is the key message that you tried to share with your consumers through such campaign(s)?
RS: Our objective is that unless you reach out to people and make them understand the benefit of internet and the reason they should use it and invest in it, they will not see the value. We want customer to understand the key message that this is what they need and it's affordable too @ Rs.99 p.m! We believe that small businesses and entrepreneurs are the driving force behind India’s economy and we are here to empower them with the right tools. An increasing number of small businesses in the country are turning to GoDaddy to help them easily and affordably establish their online presence.

AG: Industry experts suggest that smaller markets hold good adoption potential. So is GoDaddy metro-focused or are smaller markets on the planning charts as well?
RS: If we look at the growth of Internet in the country, it's actually growing faster in tier II and tier III towns. There's a statistics which says only 20% of India lives in metros, which means 80% of the country lives outside the metros. So, when India will come online, we will reach out beyond what we are today and I strongly feel tier II and tier III cities need this.

AG:  Share with us some of the challenges you face in the process and what is the kind of competition you are facing in India?
RS: From our perspective, I think the real competition is the challenge that markets offer. It's a very new market, so how internet is being used, how it's being adopted and how it will be consumed – all this will change dramatically as India grows in the coming years. We have 200 million users in more than 1.2 billion population; in my opinion, when everybody state that there is potential growth, question arises is how to solve the challenges the market offers? We are focused on having right products and solutions in the country so that we are able to support customer and customer queries.

AG: Globally you acquired five companies aiming at helping small businesses, any India-specific plan?
RS:  I think being a global company we look out for opportunities. If any relevant opportunities arise, we will definitely take it up.

AG:  What is the media mix which GoDaddy follows? 
RS: Recently for our new campaign we used TV channels, films, social media and digital platforms. Basically we use integrated marketing which targets SMB market and our customers well.

AG: How do you see the SMB market growing in India? What are your expectations for the coming years?
RS: India is a country which will have rapid adoption of internet in coming years. The biggest challenge in coming online is the availability of broadband infrastructure in the country and the relevance of internet, which will change. It is estimated that by 2015, from 150 million internet connected users, the country will double to more than 330 million connected users.