Spotlight

Directi plans for mass market Web products

Directi, the Internet products company, plans to expand its business in the communication, collaboration and content publishing space. By Vinita Gupta

Directi was founded in 1998 by brothers Bhavin and Divyank Turakhia. The vision behind Directi’s various businesses was to build technology that would leverage opportunities that a connected globe has to offer and make products that would be available to anyone.

Bhavin and Divyank were motivated by the desire to build a business that was unique and value based. Both the brothers wanted to make the most of the Internet, which was a very new phenomenon in India back in 1994, and tap the potential of the Web to enable businesses to utilize it to its fullest capacity. They started at a fundamental level, by providing Internet domain names.

Global reach

Directi aims to be present virtually and physically at various locations globally encompassing various corporations, individuals, offices, infrastructure, users, clients and partners, provide clients with global products, and partner with leaders worldwide.

Bhavin Turakhia, Founder and CEO, Directi said, “We have never considered geography as a limiting factor in any of our decisions. We harness technology to transcend geography and create a virtually global presence with respect to our users, employees, partners, suppliers and processes. Thus Directi builds mass market software products and services. We do not engage in custom development. We believe that we would be spreading our value too thin if we built software for a single client. We believe in building products which can be used by millions of users.”

Fastest growing company

Directi, valued at US $300 million with over 500 employees, has a portfolio of 25 plus products for more than 1,000,000 customers worldwide. Boasting a steady customer growth rate of 120%, Directi has been ranked amongst the fastest growing companies by Deloitte and Touche consecutively for the last four years—from 2005 to 2008. All Directi businesses rank in the Top 10 worldwide in their respective industries and market segments. Directi does not custom build solutions for single clients; they develop products and services for the mass market. All their products are standardized to suit the needs of a global clientele.

Directi has experienced phenomenal growth of 230% through 2007 to 2009 in the number of active domains till date and a 78% increase in the number of domains added. Also, the total number of resellers has increase by 71% during this period.

According to Bhavin Turakhia, Directi has grown at a phenomenal pace in the past 10 years and has crossed several milestones, becoming one of the most distinguished companies in the Web products industry.

He added, “This has been the result of our strategy that took the development and metamorphosis of the Internet in its stride. At the same time, we made sure that the transparency which manifests itself in the online medium also reflects in our work atmosphere. We have nurtured young talent and have set benchmarks in innovation and excellence. All this translated into a highly motivated culture, backed by a strong business strategy.”

Thriving on innovation

Directi’s business strategy is defined by certain fundamental principles on which their company was founded. Further, it is these very initiatives that have inspired the company’s educational/industry initiatives like CodeChef and TechTalks.

“We thrive on innovation and creativity. Our services are provided at the highest end of the value chain. We are not a backend service provider. We create Internet products and services that fulfill various needs. These products are indigenous, we conceptualize them and we build them. We invest in creating high-margin, growth-intensive intellectual property as opposed to low-margin, capital-intensive infrastructure projects,” mentioned Turakhia.

The combined product portfolio of various Directi businesses include communication and collaboration applications, social networking software, instant messaging, context analysis engines, anti-spam and anti-virus solutions, large scale billing and provisioning platforms, traffic monetization solutions, online advertising solutions, DNS management products, Linux and Windows server management software, Web hosting control panels and much more.

Organizational milestones

• In May 2001, Directi became the first and only Indian company to get an ICANN accreditation. Within seven months, it had already become the fastest growing registrar in Asia.
• In December 2003, the Directi Group crossed the 100,000 customers mark and launched LogicBoxes, a software and consulting arm that powers registrars worldwide.
• In recognition of Directi’s achievements, Bhavin Turakhia was awarded the Bharti Entrepreneur of the Year Award by the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, in September 2005.
• In October 2005, Directi crosses the mark of 500,000 customers worldwide. It was ranked as the 10th fastest growing technology company among the top 50 fastest growing technology companies, according to Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India Program, and the 147th fastest growing technology company among the top 500 fastest growing technology companies according to Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific Program.
• In February 2006, Directi Group launched its wholesale arm—ResellerClub that provides turnkey business process automation and end-to-end Web services to its 25,000+ strong channel partner network. In the same year, Directi was awarded the IT Day Award in the special achievement category. For the second consecutive year, they were ranked among the Technology Top 50 India and Technology Top 500 Asia-Pacific fastest growing technology companies by Deloitte and Touche.
• In August 2007, Directi was ranked amongst the Technology Fast 50 list by Deloitte and Touche, for the third consecutive year.
• In 2008, Skenzo, a Directi business was ranked as the fastest growing domain parking company worldwide for 2007 by revenue and headcount. ResellerClub crossed the 2 million domain names mark and continues to be the 10th largest domain registrar worldwide. Directi was ranked amongst the Deloitte and Touche Asia 500.
• In September 2009, Directi launched CodeChef—India’s first, non-commercial, multi-platform online coding competition, featuring monthly contests in more than 35 different programming languages. This was followed by launch of various other initiatives such as CodeChef TechTalks, DesignChef and Case Study 2009—all aimed at helping students and professionals across.

Future roadmap

Directi has no plans to expand by means of mergers or acquisitions. The company is going to expand its business in the communication, collaboration and content publishing space, and will be leveraging the concept of socializing enterprise communication in that direction.

“Directi is shortly going to launch a suite of products that enhance online communication and collaboration. The first set of products will allow any individual, enterprise, SOHO, SME, ME, etc., to host free email and instant messaging at their domain name through our service. This service can be used by companies, colleges, schools, institutions, organizations etc to distribute and provide email services to their user base,” added Turakhia.

Thus by introducing new products every month Directi is continuously expanding its large customer base.

vinita.gupta@expressindia.com