.co.in versus .in -- What do you think?

[mulligan]

Hi all,

Stumbled on this forum by accident and v/happy I did ;D

Anyway, what do you all think, .co.in or .in?
What are the merits, pros/cons of each?

This is a field I am exploring and wondering whether to start 'digging' or not..

Also, any opinions on who is the best IDN registrar, value for money, if you have no intention of developing but just re-selling who would you go with?
Has anyone used any of the India based registrars?

mulligan..

[IDNCowboy]

.co.in for companies/businesses or .in for content/entertainment misc

[Rubber Duck]

Hi all,

Stumbled on this forum by accident and v/happy I did ;D

Anyway, what do you all think, .co.in or .in?
What are the merits, pros/cons of each?

This is a field I am exploring and wondering whether to start 'digging' or not..

Also, any opinions on who is the best IDN registrar, value for money, if you have no intention of developing but just re-selling who would you go with?
Has anyone used any of the India based registrars?

mulligan..


Don't assume India speaks English. It doesn't! Only about 3% of Indian's are comfortable in English.

Dot IN which catch up and overtake .co.in. Where the top level has been launched after the second level, this always happens.

I think IDN implementation will only be in dot IN initially.

If you register dot com IDN in Indic scripts these will target the local more effectively than English dot IN. Because there are a dozen or so languages that gives you the capacity effectively of a dozen new registries. There will not be be as many dot IN registered as a lot of people think!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[IDNCowboy]

Dave, alot of ppl use english in india for business

even ebay.in is in english! gimme a break... (you were the one that made a whole debate on dnforum claiming ppl in the USA don't buy contact lenses "online" when it is a very large market)

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-countries-by-english-speaking-population

it is also the largest english speaking country by population.........  even a few million is alot.

[Rubber Duck]

Dave, alot of ppl use english in india for business

even ebay.in is in english! gimme a break... (you were the one that made a whole debate on dnforum claiming ppl in the USA don't buy contact lenses "online" when it is a very large market)

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-countries-by-english-speaking-population

it is also the largest english speaking country by population......... even a few million is alot.




Yes, a lot of business is done in English. Some large corporates certainly talk to one another in English. A retail level though most transactions will not be. This the area which ecommerce primarily seeks to replace.

Well, Ebay struck out in Japan and is facing serious problems in China. Ebay has yet to demonstrate it ability to function outside the Anglo-Saxon world.

With regard to contact lenses. If you put yours in, you will see that I largely retracted my remarks as the US Market structure is not similar to that in the UK. Selling contact lenses here is going to be tough as the most competitive retailers also do the eye testing. Anyway, if you are looking for DWrixon free zone, get yourself back to DNF, as I have now quit the Forum.

If you are going to quote a source on this quote, Wikipedia for which Answers is just a mirror site. The list you show gives total populations were is English is an Official Language. Even that is inaccurate as English is not an Official Language in India, it is an Associate Language. I have already made numerious posting regarding the linguistic mix in India from reliable sources both here and at DNF and I do not intend to place further postings.

I have never actually been to India, so I am not the best one to comment. I think you will find that the forum has several members that have an indepth knowledge, one of which reads and speaks 4 Indian Language with 3 separate scripts. They are investing fairly seriously in IDN.

Yes, if you have a homogenious group of about 30M affluent Indians that prefers to search the Internet in English, then that would be significant, but it not the 1Billion Market that is being hyped to some of the more naive Newbies.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[drbiohealth]

Lemme add a point or two here.

1. This talk of english prevalent in business, education blah blah is all bulls. While, people do use english in business and education, they are not too many and concentrated only in big cities. If english had the power and reach, Indian government would never have thought of launching multiligual platforms (hardware and software). Since, now they have done this is pretty indicative of the things are going to happen.

2. Nobel laureate Indian economist, Amartya Sen, has seriously underlined the importance of erasing digital divide, which has been progressing over the past few years due to IT etc etc. This is because he says if this situation continues, it can potentially lead to anarchy and an unstable society. A vast majority of Indians (over 90%) live in smaller towns and have till now very limited access to information and other things. This situation has to change for the simple reason that the society would become unstable otherwise. Rich cannot continue to become richer, while other cannot continue to live in shabby. And the government has realised that the only way they could accomplish this task is to introduce multiligual computing platform and they are working on it now, albeit late.

3. They say be roman when in Rome. One can always read the pulse of economy by observing the activities of multinational companies. Companies like Coca cola, pepsi and Macdonalds have started advertising in hindi, local language mixed with a few words of english. They do realise that english alone would be too alienating. I am sure there would be a lot of commercial sites in local languages in near future.

Comments welcome!
Raj

[mulligan]

Raj,

As someone who has lived and worked in Asia for a good many years I have found the Asian business population to be very conversant in English. In fact I would go so far as to say that a lot of companies here in Asia require potential employees to be at least bi-lingual if not multi-lingual.
I own an apparel business and I do a lot of business with Indian companies, I have found that even in the smallest factories in the smallest towns there will always be someone who I can talk to.
My Hindi is non-existent and this is purely from laziness on my part as I havnt 'had' to learn it.
This, I find, applies to 90%+ of the expat population living and/or working here.

With regard to web content in the native language of any particular country I have found the content to be mostly in English (Not all!), there are some exceptions to this, China & Indonesia being 2 that come to mind.
In talking to web developers from China in particular they have mostly expressed reluctance to develope websites in English as the main target of their web content is aimed at Mandarin speaking Chinese.
They almost exclusively write in Mandarin and tend to ignore the local dialects (Some of which are spoken by 10's of millions of people)

There is a myth in Asia that if you dont speak English then you cant do business.
With the emergence of the Indian and Chinese markets maybe it is the west that should learn to speak Hindi, Tamil, Mandarin, Malayam etc, otherwise how to do business?

mulligan..

BTW, has anyone used any of the India based registrars or can recommend one?

[DavyBUK]

Hi mulligan

With regard to Indian registrars I have a couple of hundred names with Resellers India and have always found them very good and helpful. Pratiknaik from there can often be found as a member of many of the domain names forums....I haven't used any of the others though to compare so thats just my own experience.

http://resellers.co.in

Regards

David

[Rubber Duck]

I own an apparel business and I do a lot of business with Indian companies, I have found that even in the smallest factories in the smallest towns there will always be someone who I can talk to.

Yes, I am sure you are correct especially if you are buying. Selling might be a little tougher. The question you need to answer is that when the guy you spoke to writes down the notes of that meeting, which language is it in, and does he in any case represent a sufficiently large proportion of the general population to make marketing in English viable?

With regard to web content in the native language of any particular country I have found the content to be mostly in English (Not all!), there are some exceptions to this, China & Indonesia being 2 that come to mind.
In talking to web developers from China in particular they have mostly expressed reluctance to develope websites in English as the main target of their web content is aimed at Mandarin speaking Chinese.
They almost exclusively write in Mandarin and tend to ignore the local dialects (Some of which are spoken by 10's of millions of people)

Chinese Internet is almost entirely in Chinese Characters. Although, these characters are used to write Mandarin, they are also understood by nearly all language speakers in China, even though the spoken language is different. Many are comprehendible to the Japanese which is a totally unrelated language. Chinese Internet is almost entirely in Chinese Characters, although this is really only a fairly recent development. At first is was impossible to put these characters onto the Internet except as Bit Maps, so much of the Web content was in Pinyin. As Unicode has long been sorted out for Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese these markets are now almost entirely local characters, as indeed are the Search Keywords.

Most of the Indic Scripts have only recently been standardised into Unicode and even now the distribution of bi-lingual and mutli-lingual keyboards in India is probably small. There were also issues in relation to Applications and Operating Systems.It was initially far easier to start website using Latin Characters and English than Indic scripts. It was also a bit of futile excercise as only the English conversant elite had access to computers. As the roll out of the internet gains pace all that changes. You either have to teach everyone to use English, which is something the British never acheived in 200 years of occupation, or provide them with the facilities to interact in their own language. Those that are selling rather than buying would be strongly advised to do the later.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon



T

[drbiohealth]

Hi Mulligan,

If I were in your shoes I guess I would also be saying the same thing as you have. Go a little deeper and you would realise that a paradigm shift is taking place as far as languages for webusage are considered. I am not saying that english usage will vanish. What I am saying is that hindi and other local languages will become more and more important over time.

The other day only I had posted one link somehwere where Bush had introduced a policy which was supposed to assist learning/teaching of languages like hindi, chinese etc in american schools. I agree to your point that foreigners will start to learn these languages if they are to make inroads in these respective countries. This is bound to happen, if ofcourse we assume that china and india will be forces to recon with in terms of economy and power in future.

I also agree that in India you could do business if you know english, but this statement does not mean that hindi or any local language will not proliferate. Though a vast majority of Indians do know makeshift/ crude english for doing business, they are not comfortable using english for daily routine work. Their comfort level is high in their own local languages. If these guys are given a language choice on the web, I am dead sure most of them will take the route of local language. I tell you one interesting statistic. The circulation of the most popular hindi newspaper in India is more than the combined circulation of ALL the english newspapers there. Till now, Indians didn't have a language choice due to nonportable hindi fonts. This is not the case anymore and my sense is that there will be a lot of hindi usage on the web from now on. Wait for a year or two and you will appreciate what I am saying. Some food for thought:

Why the hell a shrewd company like Microsoft is remaking its Office and windows software totally in hindi and local languages. Do you think they are doing some charity by remaking the software? They are very shrewd business people. They would not lay their hands on something not profitable...:). Infact, Microsoft is leading from the front in propagating hindi and other languages. Have a look at this link and you will realise what I am saying. This site belongs to microsoft. http://www.bhashaindia.com

Actually, India has woken up from a slumber. Its like, better late than never.... Check this link out (very recent developments):

http://www.bhashaindia.com/patrons/news/indicnews/IndianLanguageInterface.aspx

Local languages hold great importance in India's scheme of things. Lets see what happens...:-).

Cheers!
Raj

[drbiohealth]

Dave,

You have this knack of catching intricate details. You are cent percent correct that "that guy" would be making notes in his local language. Actually, there is a saying in India that most Indians (particularly with vernacular background) speak english by first translating a sentence from hindi to english in their minds.

True, even British could not convert their language in 200 years.

Cheers!
Raj

[drbiohealth]

http://resellers.co.in I guess does not support IDNs.

[Rubber Duck]

http://resellers.co.in I guess does not support IDNs.


No this is a reseller of Directi.com. as theoretically am I. Directi insist that they don't support IDN but I have about 500 there which I transferred in because they were cheap. Probably transfer them back out again shortly.

Nobody does IDN in dot IN yet as to my knowledge the registry doesn't support IDN yet, but it is coming.

Frankly, I do not see the advantage of using a local extension for IDN.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[mulligan]

I own an apparel business and I do a lot of business with Indian companies, I have found that even in the smallest factories in the smallest towns there will always be someone who I can talk to.

Yes, I am sure you are correct especially if you are buying. Selling might be a little tougher.



I should have clarified, 50/50 buying/selling....

My ending comment was slightly sarcastic, as in its about time we learned another language.

Its also not if the Indian and Chinese markets are going to be a force to be reckoned with, its when

A lot of smart money is heading east and as Raj informs us, the purse-string holders at ms and HCL Infosystems are deciding to pump a bit of moola in then its a certainty that its not as a goodwill gesture...

I have a lot of Indian friends in the IT industry and 10 years ago they couldnt get out of India quick enough, they are now going home to better pay, stock options, car/condo etc etc instead of being treated like low class labor that do the donkey work.

Personally I think the 'west' is in for a wake up call. We have had it our 'own way' for so long and are so comfortable that even with all the signs pointing to a huge increase in business in the 'east' we are not ready, and wont be for many years, and by then it may be too late. A select few who had the fore-sight to actually be bothered to pick up a bit of Mandarin/Tamil/Hindi will be the guy that dave mentions.

The question you need to answer is that when the guy you spoke to writes down the notes of that meeting, which language is it in, and does he in any case represent a sufficiently large proportion of the general population to make marketing in English viable?


mulligan..

[Rubber Duck]

Till now, Indians didn't have a language choice due to nonportable hindi fonts. This is not the case anymore and my sense is that there will be a lot of hindi usage on the web from now on. Wait for a year or two and you will appreciate what I am saying. Some food for thought:



This is exactly correct. Tamil was the first Indic Script to be put into Unicode and hence has more web content than even Hindi, which once it gets going will be the 500Kg Gorilla. The biggest Indian Language on the Internet by far at present is Urdu, which because it shares a script with Arabic and Farsi has had Portable Fonts and Bi-lingual keyboards for two decades. It has taken a long while to develop the technology, rolling it will be a comparatively rapid affair. You stock Qwerty and Indic Keyboards side by side in a shop. You dust the English ones and restock the rest. Simple market forces.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

[Rubber Duck]

Sorry, error due to intermittent connectivity with BT. I bet in India and China they don't use wet string!

[DavyBUK]

Sorry for any confusion caused with resellers not doing IDN's. As Dave W has rightly said already the registry doesn't support them at the moment and won't allow them to be registered yet so I read it as somewhere to register domains with .in and .co.in extensions......just in the current standard scripts in English etc...

Regards

David

[a2zofb2b]

This is exactly correct. Tamil was the first Indic Script to be put into Unicode and hence has more web content than even Hindi, which once it gets going will be the 500Kg Gorilla. The biggest Indian Language on the Internet by far at present is Urdu, which because it shares a script with Arabic and Farsi has had Portable Fonts and Bi-lingual keyboards for two decades. It has taken a long while to develop the technology, rolling it will be a comparatively rapid affair. You stock Qwerty and Indic Keyboards side by side in a shop. You dust the English ones and restock the rest. Simple market forces.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon


Of all the Indian Languages (with the exception of urdu) you see more sites in Tamil, because
Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and has constitutional recognition in South Africa.

For Indians, News Site in Regional Language seems to the most visitied sites . Most of them are not indexed as they are not in unicode. Some sites have already started converting to unicode .

Ravi

[Rubber Duck]

For Indians, News Site in Regional Language seems to the most visitied sites . Most of them are not indexed as they are not in unicode. Some sites have already started converting to unicode .



Now that is interesting, I incorrectly assumed that the whole Universe in terms of Hindi, Tamil etc was Unicode. Just goes to show!

These remarks are incredibly informative. I wondered if you could enlighten us further!

Dave Wrixon

[a2zofb2b]

Now that is interesting, I incorrectly assumed that the whole Universe in terms of Hindi, Tamil etc was Unicode. Just goes to show!

These remarks are incredibly informative. I wondered if you could enlighten us further!

Dave Wrixon




Most Indian site use ISCII encoding, but I think they are shifting to unicode http://www.answers.com/topic/iscii