Directi is an IT services company founded in 1998 by Bhavin Turakhia and Divyank Turakhia who was instrumental in the adoption of the seventy-day grace period for businesses concerned with the registry of IANA and ICANN. Directi is the first ICANN accredited registrar in India. The head office of Directi is in Mumbai, India, with subdivision offices in Delhi and Bangalore; Xiamen, China; Ras al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates; and in Queensland, Australia.
Directi has more than 1,500 employees working for the company. The company serves over 1,000,000 customers and has more than 50,000 channel partners, which is growing at a rate of 120% per annum. Directi services include communication and co-working apps, social networking software, instant messaging, context analysis engines, anti-spam and antivirus solutions, large-scale billing and provisioning platforms, traffic monetization solutions, online advertising solutions, DNS management products, Linux and Windows server management software, and web hosting control panels.
Endurance International Group acquired web presence business of Directi in 2014. EIG paid $109.8 million in a cash and stock for this deal. At present, Directi is valued at $1.4 billion, also making the Turakhia brothers billionaires. One of their most successful ventures, Media.net, was sold to a Chinese consortium for $900 million in 2016.
Directi has five offices in four countries.
New gTLD applications
In a press release, Directi announced its more than $30 million investment for its application for 31 new generic top level domain names (gTLDs) with ICANN's new Generic top level domain expansion program. The company established Radix to serve as the applicant and eventual registry operator for all the proposed 31 gTLDs, which are: .web, .shop, .bank, .law, .music, .news, .blog, .movie, .baby, .store, .doctor, .hotel, .play, .home, .site, .website, .click, .online, .tech .one, .ping, .space, .world, .press, .chat, .city, .deals, .insurance, .loans, .app, .host and .hosting, while Directi's traditional operations retain registry services by Bigrock and PDR Ltd.
Directi CEO Bhavin Turakhia anticipated string contention on the domain name strings. He said that his company is open to strategic partnerships with other parties. He said, "I expect there to be contention in all of them. Whether they will end up going to auction… we're completely open to strategic partnerships with other industry players who we believe can add value and join hands with us, based on merit. We'll be evaluating this on a case by case basis."
Subsidiaries
Directi has many subsidiary businesses, both wholly owned, and JSCs, including:
- "PublicDomainRegistry.com", known as PDR, a domain registry and renewal provider.
- WebHosting.Info - Webhosting.Info offers information about the various domain registrars worldwide, a forum for discussions about domain, and tips and news related to domain hosting.
- Skenzo - Skenzo provides traffic monetization and domain parking services.
- Radix - In March 2012, it was announced that Directi would be launching a new gTLD entity that would be applying for and running new extensions. Radix is partnered with ARI Registry Services for its technical, registry needs. It was not announced at that time what gTLDs Radix would be applying for, but it was clear that they intended to put together a substantial portfolio.
- .pw The Professional Web - Directi has relaunched the .pw ccTLD as an Open ccTLD, targeting a professional audience with the acronym "Professional Web". It became the company's first active experience as a TLD registry.
Directi also manages second level domains in the .pw namespace. .pw is the ccTLD for Palau. There is no registration process for higher level domain names in that namespace.
- Zeta India - Zeta is a fintech company which provides digital payments solutions and digitised employee tax benefits
CodeChef is a non-profit initiative by directi, for conducting programming contests. It hosts online programming contests every month. It also hosts various events and trainings related to programming.
References
External links
- Directi
