Indian SMB Companies’ Online Presence Still Low, Say Web Hosting Providers

India ranks as the country with the 3rd highest number of internet users, with 137 million users of the internet out of a total population crossing 1.2 billion (Source: http://bit.ly/WkAo).

We spoke with Shashank Mehrotra (Business Head, BigRock), Jasjit Sawhney (Chairman & MD, Net4 India), Rajiv Sodhi (VP & MD, GoDaddy India), and Sridhar Reddy (Chairman & MD,CtrlS) to find out if SMBs are capitalizing on the online market...

Q) What is the trend in SMBs creating a web presence?
Mehrotra: "In our customer base, 60% are from tier-II and tier-III cities. While the number of addressable SMBs (those who are IT users in some way) is 10 million inIndia, only between 500,000-700,000 of them actually
have a website. The SMB market is still underserved with less than 10% penetration for online presence. We are still at the stage of saying "if you have a business, get a website" and creating awareness. We use ads on regional language channels to get through to rural markets, and there have been promising signs of adoption"

SMBs have slowly but surely started to realize the importance of having a web presence and there are a lot of first timers who want e-commerce
enabled sites
-- Jasjit Sawhney, Chairman & MD, Net4 India

Sawhney: "The SMB market has seen a lot of changes in the last two years and there is certainly a noticeable shift in the quantum and type of  businesses looking to establish a web presence. SMBs have slowly but surely started to realize the importance of having a web presence and there are a lot of first timers who want e-commerce enabled sites".

Sodhi: "India has more than 137 million Internet users; however, domain name penetration is only 3 percent of users according to IAMAI's annual report on the Internet in India 2012. Predictions indicate that Internet
user growth will reach 300 million by 2014. As Internet adoption increases in emerging markets like India, we expect more and more Indian SMBs to get online"

Reddy: "People are spending money on search engine optimization, Google adwords, Facebook etc, to improve traffic to their site. Making sites mobile phone friendly is another trend being seen. Presence in Youtube & Images search has also become a new trend now".

Q) What are the main barriers preventing SMBs from having a website?

Mehrotra: "In India, a lot of small businesses still ask the question "Why do I need a website, when everybody else doesn't have one?" In countries like the US, it's not an option because all your customers are looking for
you online! Only ~10% of customers in India look for businesses online. Other developed countries see 40- 85% of customers looking for services online only

Once the process of discovery becomes completely online, only Once the process of discovery becomes completely online, only then will SMBs truly feel the need to have a website
-- Shahsank Mehrotra, Business Head, BigRock

then will SMBs truly feel the need to have a website"

Sawhney: "Whilst there is an overall issue of lack of awareness, the  biggest misconception is that making a website is "highly technical" and complicated. Second comes the misconception that it is very "expensive".
Neither is true, of course, it costs as little as Rs 499 per annum to have a website and if you are even moderately computer literate you can build your website in a few hours using drag, drop, cut and paste type actions"
Sodhi: "Small business owners often believe getting online is hard or time-consuming. Building a website has not always been easy, but now it can be. Security is also becoming a major concern for SMBs. In markets like India, people are not accustomed to online payments."

Reddy: "Competitors gathering intelligence and then using to their own advantage; snooping on product drivers and strategies are some of the fears that SMB's have about creating a web presence. They fear about their edge and USP being given away easily. Many people especially older generation business owners underestimate the importance of web presence"

Q) What can web hosting providers do to help SMBs overcome these
challenges?
Sawhney: "Nothing works better than allowing users to try something. We offer a free trial for our EasySite package, where users can come and create a website on a subdomain. If they are happy with its ease of use
and features they just buy the package and the site immediately goes live on their own domain name."

Sodhi: "Go Daddy Website Builder, designed especially for non-techies, gets small business owners online and mobile with pre-built websites with industry-specific text and images.We have also introduced other payment mechanisms (such as NetBanking) and offers security solutions such as SSL certificates and Website Protection Site Scanner software which keep
websites and personal data safe from hackers and malware links".

Reddy: "One of the major alleviating measures to be taken is to reassure SMB's about using technology and its financial benefits. Cost savings is certainly one of the most major benefits to be pitched in by any systems integrator or web hosting provider. Hosting providers need to deploy technology on a limited basis minimizing risk and quantifying benefits on a balanced scale. Once this is done, there would be little apprehension
in plunging to full-fledged usage."

Q) What's the difference between Linux and Windows Hosting?
Mehrotra: "Linux servers support a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache server, MySQL, PHP) and they are specialized to handle applications written in this stack. Windows servers support .NET and IIS server, so it is a different
technology stack. However, to the end user, the type of back-end server won't make any difference"

Q) Why would an established local small business need a website?

Mehrotra: "The key question to them would be "Are we going to expand out of our locality?". If they are ambitious and want to grow geographically, they will find a need to display their catalogues online naturally. Certain verticals also need a website much more than others. For example,  usinesses in travel, hospitality, exports and so on have no choice but to have a web presence because consumers look for them online. For
other verticals, the necessity will come in due time"

Q) How are web hosting providers facilitating the trend of heavy smartphone usage in web browsing?

Sawhney: "The growth of smartphones has been phenomenal in the last few years and mobile internet usage had surpassed desktop internet usage in India. ‘Mobile View', our mobile website builder tool, enables
our customers to build their mobile websites in just a few minutes. Thousands of our customers have already used this tool to get mobile websites for their businesses. "

Security is also becoming a major concern for SMBs. In markets like India, people are not accustomed to online payments - Sridhar Reddy, Chairman & MD,CtrlS
- Sridhar Reddy, Chairman & MD,CtrlS

Sodhi: "Go Daddy provides a free mobile website as part of Website Builder, which automatically converts a site to mobile - with no additional effort or cost to the SMB. Go Daddy customers can instantly optimize their
sites for millions of smartphones and tablet owners around the world. "
Reddy: "Suggesting design elements and models which make websites mobile friendly is a certain way of helping SMB's gain traction in this particular internet user segment. The more accessible one is on-the-go; better liked is the service provider"

To begin with, any SMB is slow in adopting a fullfledged e-commerce commodity model for their website. This is where they get into the click and mortar model
- Rajiv Sodhi, VP & MD, GoDaddy India

Q) How many SMBs are going for a "click and mortar" model vs. a full "ecommerce" model?

Sawhney: "At the moment it is only about 10 % of websites being ecommerce enabled. One of the biggest challenges most businesses face is the Payment Gateway integration. Although the number of purely
online model is still in a growing stage, the trend is to shift the focus from the ‘click-and-mortar' model to a complete e-commerce model. We have seen an impressive rise in the requests for e-commerce hosting
for clients looking at building their e-commerce portals. Majority of them are entrepreneurs who want to tap the opportunity of the growing trend towards online shopping among the internet-savvy consumers"
Reddy: "To begin with, any SMB is slow in adopting a full-fledged e-commerce commodity model for their website. This is where they get into the click and mortar model. Once the benefits of the internet is realized,
they quickly go into fast forward mode and adopt a fully online operation mode"

Q) Are SMBs concerned about their data residing on a web hoster's server?
Mehrotra: "If you go to a top tier hosting provider, they provide a lot more security than you can afford on your own premises. Physical access to web servers in a SMB office are much easier than in our data centers. They are
concerned, but what choice do they have? If they wish to have it on premise, they will need to spend much more on an IT team to take care of the servers, and depend on unreliable power supplies that constantly take their servers offline"

Q) What features do you offer that set you apart from competitors?

Mehrotra: "BigRock offers DesignXchange, which is a platform that connects web designers with businesses that are looking for skilled talent in their local area within their budget. We are also introducing cash on delivery, which allows organizations to pay us directly. We also believe that we are engaging small businesses better than others in the market"

Sawhney: "All sites hosted in India in ISO 270001 data centers are owned and managed by Net4.This ensures that the site's visitors from India will have a much faster experience. Net4 has the distinction of being the first
Internet services company in the World to be IS0 27001 certified, for Information Security standards adopted at its data centers "

Sodhi: "Go Daddy has more than 5 million active hosting accounts which are supported by award-winning data centers across multiple global locations with high-performance servers for fast load times. Research shows that Go Daddy hosted websites load as much as 2.3 seconds faster than competition"

Reddy: "CtrlS is the first Indian data center to have two active power sources from two different power generation plants. Our tier IV data center facility offers clients' uninterrupted power from two different power plants. The two power plants run on different sources: Hydropower and Thermal power and offer 33KV lines which power our data center. This ensures that a problem from one plant does not affect the functioning of your business"