Mumbai: Having a digital presence is one of the key criteria for business success and small, medium businesses acknowledge the importance of being online very well. However, studies suggest, out of 51 million SMBs in the country, only about 12 million have digital footprints. A significant reason for the low website penetration is lack of education and technical skills to build a website.
Therefore, SMBs prefer to hire professionals who will help them with a smooth transition from offline to online, presenting enormous opportunities to WebPros, Web developers and Resellers grow their business. Global internet domain registrar and web hosting company, Godaddy, which gives a lot of thrust on WebPros ecosystem in India, said that the country would home world’s largest WebPro community in the coming years.
A nationwide survey conducted by GoDaddy and RedShift Research points out that at least 30 percent of small businesses in India look for an internet company to build and manage their website for them. Another 24 percent look for help from a professional web designer, hence strongly establishing India for do-it-for-me (DIFM) market.
GoDaddy is betting big on the DIFM market and intends to build a strong ecosystem for the WebPro community in the country. The company has rolled out the ‘Pro Program’ to support the WebPros, web designers/developers and Resellers with the right set of tools to support their customers. The program is designed with the objective of easing their workflow, are helping them build and manage their client’s websites and projects better.
Talking exclusively with Channel Times, Raghu Murthi, Senior Vice President – Hosting, GoDaddy explained its channel strategy and upcoming channel initiatives. “In many parts of the world SBMs build their websites themselves. But in places like India, they hire professionals because the business owners due to shortage of time and technical skills. Therefore, they prefer to hire a web developer or designer and reseller. These WebPros are a huge channel for us to actually bring SMBs online. We expect India would soon become home to the world’s largest WebPro community in the coming years”, said Murthi.
In India, Godaddy engages with three types of partners: WebPros, Web designers/ developers and Resellers. The company has announced the launch of Pro program, which is specifically targeted towards the WebPros and resellers to help with a right set of tools in order to grow their business and manage their customers. WebPros are the designer, developer and maintainer of the website and the transaction is handled by Godaddy with SMBs whereas, Reseller buys services from Godaddy, they brand it on their own, price it and they do all the billing themselves. Murthi said both the Channels are important for the company to serve the large customer base.
“WebPros and Resellers are the core part of our go to market strategy they allow us to expand our footprints. But we also have direct interactions with SMBs. We will continue to support our channel partners with new product and services. We have a dedicated team to support Webpros and Resellers and a Customer Care Team in Hyderabad to assist our customers in website building”, Murthi said.