Indian IT Ministry is going to invoke nationalism which will make you ditch ‘.com’ and adopt ‘.in’ right now

Indian IT Ministry is making all efforts to make domain name-‘.in’- popular among startups and other organisations by invoking nationalism.

The ministry will be floating an advertising campaign, asking domain name seekers to ditch popular ‘.com’ and adopt ‘.in’.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MEIT) is planning a massive advertising campaign aimed at companies, individuals and startups.

Rajiv Bansal, joint secretary in MEIT, told ET the campaign should be ready for rollout in a month or so and will play on the people's nationalist sentiments to nudge them to host their website on the ‘.in’ domain name.

The ‘.in’ domain name will also boost Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India, Make in India and Start-up India campaigns.

As per reports, the ministry has a target to increase the number of '.in' domain names to 3 million by March next year. Presently, the number is at 2 million.

Apart from the ad campaign, the ministry is also planning to tie up with the Corporate Affairs Ministry and MSME to offer discounts to startups or new businesses registering with them for .in domain name.

"The proposal includes offering some kind of a discount - perhaps a new domain registration for Rs 150 or Rs 200 - to attract new businesses," Bansal told ET.

Meanwhile, the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) is also mulling to get '.bharat' domain for Hindi website extension complementary with the .in domain to popularise its use.

"As a promotional scheme, NIXI will be offering the '.bharat' domain name in Hindi complementary to select businesses or categories from this month," Bansal told ET.

Last year, NIXI had run an advertisement campaign with 22-24 seconds advertisements targeted at small and medium businessmen and entrepreneurs.