Go Daddy appoints Rajiv Sodhi to lead India expansion plans

Go Daddy, the world's largest provider of Web hosting and Internet domain names, has expanded into India. The company has opened an office in New Delhi and has also appointed Rajiv Sodhi as the managing director of Go Daddy India. Sodhi will be responsible for overseeing the company's expansion into the Indian market.

An MBA and a bachelor of engineering degree in computer science, Sodhi was working at Microsoft India as Director of both SMB and Cloud business prior to Go Daddy.

"Our vision is to expand our footprint in India, hire locally (the process of hiring a team has already started) and serve customers in the country with people who speak their language," said Warren Adelman, CEO, Go Daddy.

Go Daddy, launched in 1997, is headquartered in the US and has data center facilities in Europe and Asia, as well as an office in Canada. In 2011, it received an investment from KKR, Silver Lake and TCV for international expansion. The India expansion could be a direct result of that. The company claims to have more than 10.3 million customers worldwide and more than 53 million domain names under management. It has been offering .IN domain names (India's country code extension) since January 2009.

"Go Daddy offers a one-stop shop for small businesses and consumers who are looking to grow their businesses on the Internet. In the months ahead, we will be ramping up our investments in people, assets and resources," said Sodhi.

The company provides a variety of domain name registration plans and website design and hosting packages, as well as some on-demand services. These include products such as SSL Certificates, Domains by Proxy private registration, e-commerce website hosting, blog templates and blog software, podcast packages and online photo hosting.

According to the company, being a priority market, the India office is expected to be Go Daddy's largest international office before the end of the year. Other players who offer similar services in India include BigRock, HostIndia.net and Net4India.