Stakeholder Consultation on India’s Domain Name Market and ICANN66 Readout
  • Highlights
  • Agenda

To foster discussions on ICRIER’s ongoing research on the ‘domain name market’ in India, a consultation was organised with key domain industry stakeholders in the National Capital Region (NCR) on December 2, 2019. This research is part of a project funded by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India. The session commenced with a brief presentation by Richa Sekhani, Research Associate, ICRIER, and Gangesh Varma, Consultant, ICRIER, outlining the key findings of the study. This was followed by an open discussion focusing on the current market size of the domain name industry in India, the competitive landscape of the market, existing challenges and future growth strategies. Participants agreed that there was immense potential of the market and that the key challenges impeding growth included lack of consumer awareness, limited local language content causing slow uptake of IDNs, and lack of a favourable ecosystem. At this event, the highlights of ICANN66 were also presented by Gangesh Varma. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is among the key global Internet governance institutions responsible for the co-ordination and management of the domain name system (DNS). Its Annual General Meeting (AGM) in 2019 – ICANN66 – was held in Montréal, Canada. The session that followed focused on DNS Abuse, which was also a topic of great interest at the last ICANN Meeting. Expert insights were provided by Shubham Saran, General Manager, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), and Nitin Wali, Regional Director, Technical, Neustar of standards in India. The participants noted that India’s current contribution to the standards ecosystem has largely come from Indian counterparts of foreign corporates. Alternatively, global standards were adopted, which did not necessarily cater to the needs of the Indian IoT ecosystem. There was consensus on the need to enhance India’s role by increasing participation and contributing more actively to the global standards ecosystem. This will help India develop innovative methods concepts which could be cornerstones for the emerging ‘smart’ industries and ‘smart’ solutions.

Stakeholder Consultation on India’s Domain Name Market and ICANN66 Readout

December 2, 2019
Conference Room, ICRIER, Core 6A, 4th Floor India Habitat Centre, Lodi Road, New Delhi

Agenda

1:00PM – 2:00PM: Lunch

2:00PM – 3:00PM: Stakeholder Consultation Domain Name Industry in India

3:00PM – 3:30PM: Tea-Break

3:30PM – 5:10PM: ICANN66 Readout

5:10PM: onwards High Tea

2 Dec, 2024