Mumbai goes `dotty’. And how!

As a country, India was among the top 15 at 12th position, ahead of China at 15, Singapore at 20 and Taiwan at 21. The Asian charge was led by South Korea. which climbed from 29 rank in 1998 to 6 in 1999.

“Two years ago, India was not even on our radar screen,” NSI Director (Asia-Pacific) Arthur Chang told Newsline in Mumbai recently.

In fact, the exponential growth of dotcoms in the region forced NSI to take notice of India for the first time in 1999. Consider this. In 1998, there were only 23,000 registrations from India. In 1999, following the liberalisation of the internet sector in November 1998, registrations with NSI alone shot up by over 100 per cent to 84,000. Overall, there were 90,000 registrations. In other words, there were 246 domain names being registered very day or 10 every hour.

Asian countries are racing ahead to catch up with global leaders like the US, Canada, the UK and France, according to NSI. The organisation, which enjoys 90 per cent market share, crossed 10 million registrations today. It expects India to be among the top five in the next three to five years, given the country’s huge population. Currently, it is ranks fourth among Asian countries.

Not surprisingly, Mumbai leads in dotcom registrations among Indian cities. The metro has the highest internet subscriber base in the country and accounts for over 70 per cent of internet subsciber population. Combine with this the city’s entrepreneurial spirit and you have a downpour of dotcoms.

India Venture 2000, a programme by consultancy firm McKinsey to encourage enterpreneurship in the infotech and internet sectors, attracted the maximum number of participants from Mumbai, ahead of Hyderabad and even Bangalore. Prior to that, an informal survey conducted by an international venture capital firm found that while Bangalore was the IT capital of India, most of the dotcom activity was concentrated in Mumbai.

While there is speculation that the dotcom bubble is going burst soon, India and Mumbai have shown no sign of slowing their frenetic pace. Dotcoms are still being set up by the dozen and only time will tell how many will be successful and whether Mumbai will continue to ride the crest of the dotcom wave.