BigRock.com eyes SMEs and individual businesses

MUMBAI, INDIA: Directi, the 300 plus million dollar group of businesses including Logicboxes.com, ResellerClub.com, WebHosting.Info and Skenzo, today announced the launch of its new venture called BigRock.com in Mumbai.

“Bigrock is an independent company with the focus on end-consumers and businesses, which want to have or set up online presence or websites. Our goal is to provide a one-stop-online-shop as we believe that everybody needs websites today and we make it easy for them,” Bhavin Turakhia, Directi's founder and CEO told CyberMedia News.

Bigrock.com, is an independent company setup by Turakhia, who was a former chairman for the Global ICANN Accredited Registrars Constituency for two terms and also technical advisor to the local Cyber Crime Investigation Cell.

According to Turakhia, the website penetration in India is very low as there is an absence of trusted partners, which has significant experience of taking business online, along with lack of knowledge among consumers.

“In India, there are roughly about 80-90 million Internet users and some 1.7 million-odd websites that translates into some 2 websites for every 100 Internet users or connections, while globally this ratio is 12 or 13 websites per every 100 Internet users,” Turakhia said.

“In the US, there are 32 websites per every 100 users, so in comparison with India, it is 1/16th of the US and worldwide it is 1/6th, so the number of people and businesses having websites is significantly low in India,” he added.

Further Turakhia explained that through BigRock.com, now people can easy get domain names and registration in just two minutes' time and using the online tools one can easily design website at low cost.

According to Access Markets International Partners report that the Indian SMBs are expected to increase their spend on Internet activities by 16 per cent and most of them are showing a major interest in setting up their own websites, providing necessary information and online services related to the company online within the next year.

BigRock.com offers domain names like .in and co.in at Rs.99 for first year of registration while the .com and .net are available for Rs.499.

For SME and individual businesses, the site offers various plans ranging from 100 MB, 500 MB, 5GB to unlimited space with 20 to over 500 email addresses with costs as low as Rs.79 to Rs.229 per month.

In addition, the site has the tool — 'do it yourself,' where the consumer or user can design the websites using templates in couple of hours without depending on others for maintaining and managing the websites.

Also BigRock.com offers professional services for designing websites with six deliverable including questionnaires for customers, guidance, comparative web designing trends and process flows, which is available at one time payment of Rs.14,000.

According to Turakhia, BigRock.com aims to empower and enable some half a million SMEs, entrepreneurs and individual business in next one and half year. “We expect to start positive returns on the business in next one year or so and are looking at expanding operations in US and UK,” Turakhia concluded.

About couple of millions have been invested in BigRock.com and has 70-80 staffs including sales, marketing and support teams with offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. The firm has earmarked Rs.10 crore to marketing and advertising to reach the market and potential customers.