.indians Pre-Register Domain - .indians Domain Information

Mumbai Indians (MI) is a popular and prominent cricket franchise representing the city of Mumbai in the Indian Premier League (IPL), now in its 5th season. Mumbai Indians is owned by Reliance Industries Limited and is headed by Smt. Nita Mukesh Ambani, the wife of the Managing Director (MD) of Reliance Industries limited (RIL), Sh. Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani.
The Reliance Group, founded by Sh. Dhirubhai H. Ambani (1932-2002), is Indiaʹs largest private sector enterprise in India. The groupʹs annual revenues are in excess of US$ 58 billion (2010-2011). The flagship company, Reliance Industries Limited, is a Fortune Global 500 company ranked 134, by net revenues, and 119, by net profit, as per Fortune Global 500 list, 2011. The company has interests across multiple sectors including Exploration and Production, Refining and Marketing, Petrochemicals, Organized Retail, Telecom and Financial Services.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is a professional league for Twenty20 cricket competition in India. It was initiated by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2008. As of now, 9 teams participate in the competition, consisting of players from around the world. As of the fourth season IPL's brand value was estimated to be around $3.67 billion.
MI was started in 2008 and was one of the founding members of IPL. Since its inception it has amassed a huge fan following with about 2.5 million fans and many more who wear the official colour ‘blue' with pride and swear by the team. All MI cricket matches have been played in a sold out stadium with waves of colour blue, cheering the team. We estimate that Mumbai Indians fans will cross the 3.5 million mark by the end of this IPL season and grow to 4.5 million by the next one.
MI team is the proud owner of some of the most talented and respected cricketers from around the globe, including players from India, Sri Lanka, Australia and South Africa. By the end of the fourth season the brand value for MI was estimated to be around $57.13 million .
MI has been using the power of the Internet to spread its message and bring cricket to the Internet by making significant investments over the course of 4 years. Currently Mumbai Indians owns www.mumbaiindians.com and is very active on all the major social networking platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Mumbai Indians wants to acquire and own the TLD ".Indians" to further its dream and make Internet a part of the lives of its fans and countless other Indians who proudly wear the colour blue.
Today Mumbai Indians' primary website ‘www.mumbaiindians.com' enjoys traffic which exceeds 30,000 unique visitors per month. Since IPL is an annual event which mostly runs in the months of April and May, the traffic peaks during these months but the website enjoys a steady stream of about 6000 monthly visitors through the year. The visitors to the website are generally interested in information about players, match schedules, scores of current and previous matches, match day pictures, videos and buying tickets.
By acquiring the domain ".Indians" MI would like to offer its fans and Indians in general an opportunity to associate themselves with the name "Indians" by allowing second level domain names under the TLD ".Indians". This offer will initially be open to only the fans of Mumbai Indians who become a member of the exclusive Mumbai Indians club and wish to enjoy the club's privileges along with a unique website address with ".Indians" as a top level domain name.
The program will then be extended to the rest of India so that that every Indian, irrespective of their location, race, caste, creed can proudly declare that they belong to the great nation of India and acquire a ".Indians" web address.
By acquiring ".Indians" we wish to harness its power and provide:
- An easier navigation to the website by providing an easy to remember address
- A higher brand recall and increased traffic to the website
- Control over the second level domains and the ability to offer them to Indians and Mumbai Indians fans
- A chance for Indians to move from passive consumers of Internet to active participants
Every year the MI team promotes the website, the Facebook page and the twitter account through various marketing activities ranging from OOH and TVCs to online banner advertisements and sponsored advertisements on Facebook. This generates traffic to its website both of unique and repeat visitors.
RIL intends to further enhance the MI brand and reward its loyal fan base by offering them the opportunity to get a second level domain with ".Indians" as the TLD. Subsequently RIL will offer to the same to public at large across India and the world.
RIL has also purchased 4G frequency license to provide high quality data services in India by paying a license fee of $ 2.8 billion USD. The company is expected to launch the services on a pan India basis and bring Internet access to millions of Indians and to most of them for the first time. With more than 110 million Internet users, and a projected year-on-year growth of 30%, India is expected supersede USA as the second largest Internet users in the world by 2018. This phenomenal growth is difficult to be achieved by using traditional means of communication such as copper wire/fibre because of India's large geographical topology. Thus wireless technology such as 4G/LTE is best solution, hence RIL is best poised to lead India on this journey and emerge as a digital power house.
RIL, with direct access to such a large Internet user base will be able to educate and encourage Internet users about domain names and clearly articulate the advantages of having an online presence. In India, less than 3% percentage of Internet users have domain names as compared to developed markets such as UK and USA, where more than 27% of users have domain presence.
India, which boasts of the second largest mobile user base in the world, will soon have an Internet user base to match. Whilst India and Indians prepare for this growth, it is empirical that there be more TLDs, which resonate with Indians and are lucrative enough to excite them and compel them to join the millions of domain owners. ".INDIANS" will not only bring in relevancy but will also make it contextually correct to have domains with an extension of .INDIANS.
In most cases of the other existing TLDs the second level domain names are not available; even if it is available the extension makes it irrelevant to the regional context. These available domain name TLDs are not recallable or recognisable in this part of the world. This has created an artificial but practical limitation in the second level domain extensions. RIL with its 4G wireless broadband service will garner large demand as more and more people in India go online and act to own a personalised domain on the World Wide Web. While the 4G initiative will fuel the growth of the Internet, the ".Indians" initiative, with the help of great content, targeted marketing, and sales strategy will increase the growth of Internet ecosystem by encouraging more participants to actively participate on the Internet.
With the combination of IPL team ‘Mumbai Indians' and RIL's 4G initiative, we see a tremendous opportunity for .INDIANS to be one of the most successful TLDs in India and in other international markets which have a large Indian population.
We will offer all Indians including the fans of Mumbai Indians a chance to acquire a second level domain under ".Indians" TLD. We project that in the first year of operation we will be able to sell about 156,630 second level domains; this number will go up to 375,825 domains in the second year and up to 666,870 in the third year of operations.

India has the second largest mobile user base in the world, next only to China. It also has the third largest Internet user base, after China and USA. But currently India has only 10.2% internet penetration. These two distinguished realities imply the fact there is tremendous opportunity that is well open for the future Internet market in India.
We see dual benefits of ".INDIANS". First, the emotional connect that it will provide the fans of Mumbai Indians by offering them a chance to have a TLD that is similar to that of their favourite cricketer, favourite cricket team and the players they idolize, thus instilling a sense of pride in them. Second, is the fact that every person will now have a chance to acquire an Internet identity that declares to the world their affinity and their passion for ".Indians". This is not restricted to only people who are citizens of India or have an affinity to India, but to every community that can relate to the word ‘Indians'. Be it fans of Mumbai Indians, people of Indian origin, a product/service targeted at India, or just about anything that can be branded better or easily memorised with an ".Indian" TLD name.
Mumbai Indians has the largest internet following amongst all the 9 teams that are part of IPL. These fans are forever looking for ways to connect and proudly associate themselves with the team and the players. For instance, if the popular players have their own URLs with ".Indians" as the TLD, it will fuel the desire of fans to acquire one as well. India being the land of cricket, with one of the superstars part of the Mumbai Indian team, this can be a huge opportunity to advance the TLD and popularise owning domain names in India.
While India has shown immense growth in the Internet user base in the last 2-3 years, the same is yet to be seen in the Web presence and participation by way of having a website. However, the same has visibly changed in the last few years and India has grown its domain name market size from 1% to 3%. From this transformation, we interpret that the opportunity of new TLD, which will be relevant to the current environment, will also grow among both individuals and businesses across India.
India is estimated to have more than 27 million small and medium business (SMB) entities but only 2% or less have a web identity or a dedicated web site. Also, India has the second largest population in the world and also the third largest Internet community. These facts clearly indicate the immense opportunity there is for domain names, especially the ones which are relevant to the Indian context, such as ".Indians". Being a late entrant in the domain name adoption market, people from India never had a true opportunity to own domain names that are relevant to them. Most of them were already subscribed to, and the ones that were available were too complex to have any traction or emotional connect. Hence, introducing ".Indians" as a TLD will make the ownership of a domain more attractive and will have an emotional connect with people, motivating them to invest and actively try to acquire them for their future web identity.
In India more than 50,000 new companies are registered every year. These companies add to millions of companies already operating in the market. The already large SMB segment with 35 million businesses is also growing at a rapid pace. Only a small fraction of these businesses have any online presence but with the Internet becoming the preferred medium to conduct business, this small fraction is poised to grow rapidly. The availability of a preferential TLD and second level domains within it will go a long way in motivating these businesses to adopt the internet and make it the medium of choice when conducting business.
By offering ".INDIANS" as a TLD to the market, we will provide the masses of India an opportunity acquire a desired domain name, which has relevance and provides a sense of pride. We assume that ".Indians" will initially be used by individuals and organizations to promote their content which directly relates to or sells to Indians. For instance, an organisation that is selling garments that are ethnically Indian, can now have a website that is named as "www.garments.indians". This may or may not be owned by an Indian, but will imply the fact that this is a garment website that is dealing with Indian outfits. This will help them distinguish themselves from general corporate and marketing sites in other top level domains such as COM.
People will very quickly realize enormous economic, informational and other functional advantages of owning a domain name with ".INDIANS" as the TLD. Some of the examples are:
Sports - Different sports organization at national, state and city levels could popularize their sport and their club//organization by associating themselves with ".Indians" TLD. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) could adopt ‘www.cricket.indians', the hockey association could adopt ‘www.hockey.indians' and so on. This will bring immense visibility to those sports that are not so popular or are ignored by the community due to lack of information and opportunity.
Tourism - Indian tourist destinations can better market themselves globally as a tourist destination by owning a domain name with ".Indians" as the TLD. For instance websites such as ‘www.incredible.indians', ‘www.spritualtour.indians', ‘www.yogatours.indians', ‘www.ayurvedatour.indians' and others. ".INDIANS" can very effectively develop into the de-facto standard for all things ‘Indian' and be a strong force in improving the global identity of the India in the tourism sector.
Education - India has been the popular educational hub for many developing countries especially Africa. Now as part of the promotions there can be ‘www.education.indians', ‘www.engineeringcolleges.indians', ‘www.medicalcolleges.indians' and so on. This will make the information easily and readily accessible to the public and offer new and innovative courses such as design, neuroscience to be noticed at par with other popular courses.
Corporates and Multinationals - India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and the same is true for 1000s of large organizations that are fuelling this growth. It is difficult for these organizations, especially multinationals, to offer truly regional services and to market the same. With the opportunity to offer their services under ".Indians", they can easily build a loyal customer base and create communities to propagate their product features which are specific to India.
Portals - Portals which offer directory services targeted to specific need and India will quickly emerge and offer focused search facilities such as ‘www.schools.indians', ‘www.shops.indians', ‘www.retails.indians', ‘www.hotels.indians' and ‘www.sports.indians'. These websites will further help propagate the ".Indians" TLD as most of the listed companies/entities will wish to own a domain with ‘.Indians' as TLD to showcase their solidarity to India and align themselves with the portal.
Marketing advantages - We see a huge potential for every brand in India to own a ‘www.brand.Iindians' domain for enhancing brand visibility. This will also help in creating a more positive user experience, by clearly articulating the fact that the organization is aligned to Indians and make an immediate connect to probable partners and customers.

We are sure that ‘.Indians' will become a de-facto standard for anyone who wishes to do business with the Indian consumer. Owning a ‘.Indians' brand will become a necessity rather than a choice and it will help India and Indians clearly mark a place for themselves in the Internet domain.

RIL's registry policies are designed to follow the highest of standards that meet the criteria for global operations.



In general, domains will be offered for periods of one to ten years, but no greater than ten years. Registrations made in the Sunrise period may have an established minimum number of required years.

The roll-out of our TLD is anticipated to feature the following phases:

Reservation of reserved names and premium names, which will be distributed through special mechanisms as is detailed in the policies for reserved names section below.

Sunrise period - This is the required period for trademark owners to secure their domains before availability to the general public. This phase will feature applications for domain strings, verification of trademarks via Trademark Clearinghouse and a trademark verification agent, auctions between qualified parties who wish to secure the same string, and a Trademark Claims Service.

General Availability period - In this period real-time registrations are made on a first-come first-served basis. Trademark Claims Service will be in use for the first 60 days of the general availability period. The registration of domain names in the ".INDIANS" gTLD will follow standard practices, procedures and policies, which including;
- Domain registration polices (for example, grace periods, transfer policies, etc.) are defined in response question 27 of the application for gTLD.
- Abuse prevention tools and policies, for example, measures to promote WHOIS accuracy and efforts to reduce Phishing and Pharming, are discussed in detail in our response 28 of the application for gTLD.
- Rights protection mechanisms and dispute resolution mechanism policies (for example, UDRP, URS) are detailed in 29 of the application for gTLD.

Other detailed policies for this domain include policies for reserved names



Reserved names
There are two categories of reserved names for this TLD: registry reserved names and premium names.

Registry reserved names
For registry reserved names we will reserve the following classes of domain names, which will not be made generally available to registrants either during the Sunrise period or any subsequent period:
- All of the reserved names required in Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement
- The geographic names required in Specification 5 of the new gTLD Registry Agreement
- The registry operator's own name and variations thereof, and registry operations names (such as registry.tld, and www.tld), for internal use
- Names related to ICANN and Internet standards bodies (iana.tld, ietf.tld, w3c.tld, etc.), for delegation of those names to the relevant organizations upon their request
- The list of reserved names will be published publicly before the Sunrise period begins, so that registrars and potential registrants will know which names have been set aside

Premium names

The registry will also designate a set of premium domain names, set aside for distribution via special mechanisms. The list of premium names will be published publicly before the Sunrise period begins, so that registrars and potential registrants will know that these names are not available. Premium names may be distributed via mechanisms such as requests for proposals, contests, direct sales, and auctions.
For the auctioning of premium names, we intend to contract with an established auction provider that has successfully conducted domain auctions. This will ensure that there is a tested, trustworthy technical platform for the auctions, auditable records, and reliable collection mechanisms. With our chosen auction provider, we will create and post policies and procedures that ensure clear, fair, and ethical auctions. As an example of such a policy, all employees of the registry operator and its contractors will be strictly prohibited from bidding in auctions for domains in the TLD. The auction rules will cover all possible scenarios, such as how domains will be awarded if the winning bidder does not make payment.

Privacy and confidential information protection
As per the New gTLD Registry Agreement, we will make domain contact data (and other fields) freely and publicly available via a Web-based WHOIS server. This default set of fields includes the mandatory publication of registrant data. Our Registry-Registrar Agreement will require that registrants consent to this publication.
We shall notify each of our registrars regarding the purposes for which data, about any identified or identifiable natural person ("Personal Data") submitted to the Registry Operator by such registrar, is collected and used, and the intended recipients (or categories of recipients) of such Personal Data (the data in question is essentially the registrant and contact data required to be published in the WHOIS). We will require each registrar to obtain the consent of each registrant in the TLD for the collection and use of such Personal Data. The policies will be posted publicly on our TLD web site. As the registry operator, we shall not use or authorize the use of Personal Data in any way that is incompatible with the notice provided to registrars.

Our privacy and data use policies are as follows:
- As registry operator, we do not plan to sell bulk WHOIS data. We will not sell contact data in any way. We will not allow, enable, or otherwise support the transmission by e-mail, telephone, or facsimile of mass unsolicited, commercial advertising or solicitations
- DNS query data will never be sold in a way that is personally identifiable
- We may from time to time use the demographic data collected for statistical analysis, provided that this analysis does not disclose individual Personal Data and provided that such use is compatible with the notice provided to registrars regarding the purpose and procedures for such use

As the registry operator, we shall take significant steps to protect Personal Data collected from registrars from loss, misuse, unauthorized disclosure, alteration, or destruction. In our responses to Question 30 of the application for gTLD ("Security Policy") and Question 38 of the application for gTLD ("Escrow") we detail the security policies and procedures we will use to protect the registry system and the data contained therefrom from unauthorized access and loss.

Please see our response to Question 26 of the application for gTLD ("WHOIS") regarding "searchable WHOIS" and rate-limiting. That section contains details about how we will limit the mining of WHOIS data by spammers and other parties who abuse access to the WHOIS.

In order to acquire and maintain accreditation for our TLD, we will require registrars to adhere to certain information technology policies designed to help protect registrant data. These will include standards for access to the registry system and password management protocols. Our response to Question 30 of the application for gTLD, "Security Policy" provides details of implementation.

We will allow the use of proxy and privacy services, which can protect the personal data of registrants from spammers and other parties that mine zone files and WHOIS data. We are aware that there are parties who may use privacy services to protect their free speech rights, or to avoid religious or political persecution.

RIL has adopted the policies, as described in question 18b of the application for gTLD, to ensure fair and equitable access and cost structures to the Internet community, including:
- No new burdens placed on the Internet community to resolve name disputes.
- Utilization of standard registration practices and policies (as detailed in responses to questions 27, 28, 29 of the application for gTLD).
- Protection of trademarks at launch and on-going operations (as detailed in the response to question 29 of the application for gTLD).
- Fair and reasonable wholesale prices.
- Fair and equitable treatment of registrars.

As per the ICANN Registry Agreement, we will use only ICANN-accredited registrars, and will provide non-discriminatory access to registry services to those registrars.

Pricing Policies and Commitments

Applicant reserves the right to change this pricing for promotional purposes in a manner available to all accredited registrars. Registry Operator reserves the right to work with ICANN to initiate an increase in the wholesale price of domains if required. Registry Operator will provide reasonable notice to the registrars of any approved price increase.

Privacy Policy

In line with the recognized International practice and for the information of customers and others who visit our RIL and its group companies' web sites, we believe it is necessary to post a privacy statement. We understand that our customers and web site visitors are concerned about the privacy of information. We have established policies and procedures concerning the collection, use and security of users' information that will help protect their privacy. Our privacy policies are designed to help us serve our customers/visitors while maintaining strict privacy and security standards. Customer confidentiality and privacy are of utmost concern to RIL.
RIL respects the privacy rights and interests of each person and will observe the following principles when processing sensitive / personal data:
i) Data will be processed fairly and lawfully
ii) Data will be collected for specified and legitimate purposes and not processed further in ways incompatible with those purposes which have been duly explained, communicated to and consented to by each person concerned
iii) Data will be relevant to and not excessive for the purposes for which they are collected and used. For example, data may be rendered anonymous when feasible and appropriate, depending on the nature of the data and the risks associated with the intended uses.
iv) Data will be kept only as long as it is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected and processed and in accordance with data storage requirements under various applicable local laws.
v) Data will be processed in having full regard to each person's lawful rights (as described in these Standards or as provided by appropriate law).
vi) All appropriate technical, physical, and organizational measures will be taken to prevent unauthorized access, unlawful processing, and unauthorized or accidental loss, destruction, or damage to data.
vii) RIL does not release customer information except as directed by law or as per your mandate.
We use information to
• Comply with all applicable laws and regulations
• Help us design or improve our products and services for users benefit.
• Understand users' needs so that we can provide quality products and superior services.
• To comply with laws, guidelines and regulations that govern the financial services in the country.
Privacy policy is subject to change periodically.

We will protect names with national or geographic significance by reserving the country and territory names at the second level and at all other levels within the TLD, as per the requirements in the New TLD Registry Agreement (Specification 5, paragraph 5).
We will employ a series of rules to translate the geographical names required to be reserved by Specification 5, paragraph 5 to a form consistent with the ʺhost namesʺ format used in domain names.
Considering the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) advice "Principles regarding new gTLDs", these domains will be blocked, at no cost to governments, public authorities, or IGOs, before the TLD is introduced (Sunrise), so that no parties may apply for them. We will publish a list of these names before Sunrise, so our registrars and their prospective applicants can be aware that these names are reserved.
We will define a procedure so that governments can request the above reserved domain(s) if they would like to take possession of them. This procedure will be based on existing methodology developed for the release of country names in the .INFO TLD. For example, we will require a written request from the country's GAC representative, or a written request from the country's relevant Ministry or Department. We will allow the designated beneficiary (the Registrant) to register the name, with an accredited Afilias Registrar, possibly using an authorization number transmitted directly to the designated beneficiary in the country concerned.
As defined by Specification 5, paragraph 5, such geographic domains may be released to the extent that Registry Operator reaches agreement with the applicable government(s). Registry operator will work with respective GAC representatives of the country's relevant Ministry of Department to obtain their release of the names to the Registry Operator.
If internationalized domains names (IDNs) are introduced in the TLD in the future, we will also reserve the IDN versions of the country names in the relevant script(s) before IDNs become available to the public. If we find it advisable and practical, we will confer with relevant language authorities so that we can reserve the IDN domains properly along with their variants.
Regarding GAC advice regarding second-level domains not specified via Specification 5, paragraph 5: All domains awarded to registrants are subject to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute
Resolution Policy (UDRP), and to any properly-situated court proceeding. We will ensure appropriate procedures to allow governments, public authorities or IGO's to challenge abuses of names with national or geographic significance at the second level. In its registry-registrar agreement, and flowing down to registrar-registrant agreements, the registry operator will institute a provision to suspend domains names in the event of a dispute. We may exercise that right in the case of a dispute over a geographic name.