Bangalore, November 7 2016: A first-ever study of Internet domain names in India has turned up some interesting -- even unexpected -- results.
The  study,  “State of the Domain Name Industry in India”,  carried out by leading management consulting firm,  Zinnov,  shows that  the domain name business has grown in India, faster than the global  rate -- an annual growth since  2013 of 11.9 percent compared to 8.7  percent  worldwide.   But when it comes to  penetration -- that is number of domains per 100 Internet users --  India is a laggard:  1.1 %  compared to China's 3.6 percent and the US 43.6 peercent.
As of June 2016, the domain  count stood at 4.9 million in India and at 335 million globally.
Inspite of government helping create the India-specific   dot in  ( .in) domain, Indian enterprises prefer the dot com ( .com)  name: over half (55%) of domain names registered in India are on .com domain extension.  Some 79% of the Small and Medium Businesses showed preference for  a .com domain.
The report reveals that 40% of the total registered domain names in India are used for creating a website; while 10-12% of them are used for professional emails. A share of 3-4% of the domains are utilized for creating mobile enabled websites.
Within India  Delhi and the National Capital Region, Maharashtra,  and Karnataka  are the top 3 states with over 38% market share in domains.