Tucows Beats GoDaddy to Become New Technical Service Provider for India’s .in Domains

Tucows has won a major industry victory, beating GoDaddy to become the new back-end registry service provider for India’s .in country code top-level domain (ccTLD). The switch will involve approximately 4 million domains and is expected to be the largest single top-level domain migration in the history of the Domain Name System (DNS).

During a recent earnings call, Tucows CEO Elliot Noss told analysts that Tucows has been selected as the technical service provider for .in domains operated by India’s National Internet Exchange (NIXI). “Our teams are working closely and have established a dedicated team in India to support this initiative,” Noss said, adding that the migration is scheduled to be completed later this year.

According to Verisign’s Domain Industry Brief, the number of .in domains is expected to reach 4.1 million by the end of 2024, which also proves the scale of this migration. The move will surpass the 3.1 million domains that Afilias (now Identity Digital) took over in 2018 for Australia’s .au domains.

The win marks Tucows’s stronger competitiveness in the domain industry. It is worth noting that in 2019, GoDaddy and Neustar successfully won .in domain contracts at lower prices, with domains priced at $0.70 each, while Tucows’ price structure this time may be as low as $0.50 per domain, meaning that the contract may be worth tens of millions of dollars over five years. However, Noss stressed that while the deal contributed significantly to Tucows’ revenue, its profit contribution was typical of large, high-volume customers.