GoDaddy opens up to Indian languages. Will the floodgates open soon?

India’s language diversity has often been quoted as the key reason behind some of biggest contradictions in its digital battlegrounds. Thus, even as overall access grew, adoption has not always followed the same pace. Similarly, in the past year, despite continuous growth in digital numbers, the growth of e-commerce was slow.

Based on GoDaddy's customer care feedback and other research, there was increasing evidence that enabling Indian languages for its services was a must. For the internet domain registrar and web hosting company, India is the second largest market after the US. GoDaddy will now be available in three Indian languages ‑ Hindi, Tamil, and Marathi ‑ for all its SMB products, website, marketing and customer support.

“We are committed to helping small businesses grow and in helping eliminate barriers that prevent them from getting online. By localising customer touchpoints, including our website, customer care, marketing and products, GoDaddy is focussed on being closer to its customers,” said Rajiv Sodhi, Vice President and Managing Director, GoDaddy India and Australia.

Rajiv informed us that between these three Indian languages, they expect to cover close to 61 percent of all Indian SMB’s, a figure they would keep building on with more language additions in the pipeline.

Pointing to the fact that within a week of offering languages on its customer care, they had seen a shift of 40 percent queries to local languages, much faster than they ever expected. Sodhi expressed optimism that with this move, more business owners would consider and make the shift to a digital presence now.

With India’s National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) pushing hard with ICANN to get domain name registration going in local languages, besides enabling wider availability and spread of local language scripts, we believe this move by GoDaddy will mark the beginning of a decisive shift to make Digital India truly inclusive. Something which can only be positive for all stakeholders.

According to Target Group Index (TGI), 73 percent of India’s 51 million SMB’s are located in Tier 2 and 3 cities. To add to that, RedShift Research and GoDaddy quote a 2015 survey to state that about 63 percent of small businesses don’t have their own website. It is these businesses that will be able to consider a digital touch point more actively now, with language options a reality.

The company has launched a major 360-degree media push behind the move, with a TV commercial  by its agency TBWA playing nationally (in all three languages too of course). Built around the classic song “Nanha Munna Rahee Hoon” from 1962, the 54-year-old song is probably just one sign that when it comes to India, you can never dig deep enough to hit pay dirt.