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Podium
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As a storyline, it is straight out of Silicon Valley start up lore. In 1998, two Mumbai-based brothers, sixteen year old Divyank and eighteen year old Bhavin Turakhia start a web products company based on an initial principal of Rs. 25, 000 loaned by their parents. Close to a decade later, the Directi group of companies, which has a spread of web based products and services, is a Top 10 company in almost every global market category within which it operates.
Divyank Turakhia, the 25 year old co-founder of Directi is loath to disclose revenue numbers, but instead points to a company valuation of over Rs. 1400 crores. In early 2007, Directi received bids in the range of Rs. 1200 crore from large growth-stage private equity firms that wanted to invest into the various Directi businesses. Directi has not taken on any external investment so far, but Divyank points out that the valuation does indicate how fast the business has grown. A statement validated by the company’s position on the Deloitte India Fast 50 List and Deloitte Asia Pacific Fast 500 List for three consecutive years – 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The various different Directi businesses include:
- LogicBoxes.com, which supplies business automation software for domain registrars and other large web service companies.
- Skenzo.com, which provides software for Internet traffic monetization
- ResellerClub.com, which supplies software products and web services such as website builder tools, domain registration, web hosting, email hosting and digital certificates through a channel of Resellers in 240 countries
- Answerable.com, which provides the same products and services as ResellerClub directly to end customers around the world
- PublicDomainRegistry.com, which was the first ICANN accredited Registrar to start operations from India
- WebHosting.Info which supplies statistics and research for the web hosting and domain names industry
Directi’s business growth is reflected in market leading positions in each of its chosen areas
- LogicBoxes is the world's #1 provider of complete business automation solutions for domain registrars ( Industry Sources)
- Skenzo was the #1 growing domain parking company worldwide for 2006 & 2007, by revenue (Industry Sources)
- ResellerClub is one of the Top 5 private label Resellers / Web Solutions Providers in the world (Source- RegistrarStats.com)
- PublicDomainRegistry is the 10th largest ICANN Accredited Registrar worldwide (Source - RegistrarStats.com )
- WebHosting.Info (http://www.webhosting.info) is the largest global provider of statistics and research in the web services industry. (Industry Sources)
The company, which employs around 450 people, has an unusual model within the Indian context. It is very clear that it is in the business of retail web products sold to individual customers globally. This is the price competitive world of retail software, not the mega $ enterprise sales model that most Indian IT companies pursue. Directi products are in use by over 2 million customers (Source - RegistrarStats.com, Industry Data) in over 240 countries globally.
Why this model? Divyank says that Directi was very clear about building products with original IP. New product creation is the main focus of the company – according to Divyank, around 200+ of the approximately 450 people at Directi are involved in building/managing the products/new features. The business model leverages the phenomenal reach of the Internet and Directi leveraged this in its early days when it focused 100% on Internet based marketing for its then newly launched domain hosting service. The team used SEO, forums and newsgroups to reach targets - “the idea then was to get as many people on board who understood the technical superiority of our products”. As momentum built up, the company established a network of resellers which scaled with the business. Today the company uses a network of 52,000 resellers who push Directi products.
Marketing is typically the biggest challenge at product led businesses. But at Directi, selling has never been an issue. As sales gained traction, the company focused on building deep relationships with industry associations such as ICANN, sponsoring key industry conferences and ensuring that one of the Turakhia brothers regularly spoke at industry forums globally.
The real challenge, he says, has been getting good people. This is an issue across the industry, but “it helps that we are working on extremely large technology products. The best people always want to work on challenging, large-scale products that use cutting edge technology as compared to building custom software modules which tends to get boring and repetitive in the long run. Being part of building products that are used by hundreds of thousands of users worldwide touches most people”, says Divyank. This is reflected in Directi’s low attrition rates – only 5% for technical positions.
The key ingredient for fast growth and success? “Being passionate about what you do. The way we see it, we are getting paid for doing something that we would even do for free!”
Second thoughts? “You need to have second thoughts all the time. One has to be extremely nimble to change, take a fresh look at things at regular intervals, and be open to ideas all the time”, says Divyank. Given that Internet led businesses have some of the lowest entry barriers to competition, and new ideas are the life blood of a technology business, it would seem that Directi has got this last one right.
Element – Text box on Skenzo.
Skenzo One of the Directi group companies, Skenzo is in the unusual business of domain monetization. When internet users type-in an inactive domain name in their browsers, they typically see an error page or an under construction notice. The Skenzo service allows domain/traffic owners to monetize this space, so that visitors see an active website primarily comprising of monetized content that is precisely targeted to each visitor. The Skenzo software enables dynamic web page build up, using complex semantic & behavior based algorithms that analyze and process terabytes of internet traffic on a real-time basis. The pages serve out advertisements, and revenue is generated from the advertising – either as CPCs or CPMs – for the domain/traffic owners. The owner of the traffic pays a share of the revenue to Skenzo for using its software. The service is currently used on over 5 million domain names, and serves about 15 billion advertising units each year. Does Skenzo see itself as a media business? “No it’s clearly a technology business – at least as of right now. While we do assist publishers to get ads from various ad networks – we do not have an ad network of our own – our customers primarily use advertising inventory from Google/Yahoo/Ask etc. Our customers pay us for using the software that we provide to them”, says Divyank. |
Largest Providers of Business Automation Solutions for Domain Registrars Data Source: Directi |
Fastest Growing Domain Monetization Companies: - Skenzo
- DomainSponsor
- TrafficZ
- Sedo
- NameMedia
Data Source: Directi |
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Updated on:
25 Jan, 2008
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