India's
2nd annual DomainX
conference
is coming up this week with the
two-day event set to run at the
five-star Taj West End Hotel
in Bangalore, India Friday
and Saturday, August 7 & 8,
2015. DomainX Founder and CEO Manmeet
Pal Singh told us registration
is now closed after hitting
1,000 online sign ups Saturday. The
actual attendance is expected to
fall between 500-600 because
many who registered for the free
second day only (with nothing
invested) will not make the trip.
Even so, if expectations are met,
attendance will be around 40%
higher than it was the show's
successful debut run last
year in Hyderabad.
DomainX's
unique format offers a special networking
day on day 1 Friday - a day
dedicated to face to face
interaction between attendees and
experts, with just a couple of short
introductory talks from the
stage (the first coming from DomainX
Brand Amabassador Deepak Daftari
and the second from DN Journal's
Ron Jackson). Day 2 Saturday has
a more traditional agenda with
keynote speakers and an array of
panel discussions on timely
subjects. I was originally scheduled
to sit on one of the panels but have
since been invited to deliver a
second keynote instead and will be
honored to again join Deepak in
doing that Saturday. You can see the
full conference agenda here.
|
Manmeet
Pal Singh
DomainX Founder & CEO
|
|
IBM's
Samarth Kholkar will
be
speaking at DomainX
Saturday |
There
have been several additions
to the agenda since my last
update on the
show. IBM Cloud Business
Development Leader Samarth
Kholkar is now scheduled
to speak at 3:30 Saturday
afternoon and 90 minutes
later, during the Conference
Awards ceremony, there will
be a book launch
event marking the release of
Selling Domains Fast,
written by Indian domain
name investor Aishwin
Vikhona. Singh
said Mr. Vikhona has closed
domain sales running into
six figures over the past
few months.
I
mentioned earlier that
DomainX made day 2 Saturday
open to anyone at no
charge (until the show
reached full capacity and
registration had to be
closed). There was a low fee
for those who wanted to come
for day 1 networking but
even those tickets topped
out at only $99, far
below western conference
standards. Of course the
only thing that allows
DomainX to do that and still
hold the show at a world
class facility like the Taj
West End Hotel is sponsor
support. |
Singh believes the cost to attend
has to be kept low to help accelerate
growth in the Indian domain
market by eliminating cost as a
barrier to entry for those who
want to learn more about the
business. Fortunately, a number of
well-known sponsors share that
vision and stepped up so DomainX
could continue to offer no or low
cost tickets as they did last year
as well.
In
alphabetical order, Escrow.com,
Go Daddy and INForum.in
are Platinum sponsors while
Airfare.in, .Desi, Domaining.com,
DomainPros.com, IBM and
Resello.com are Gold Sponsors.
Further support is coming from eight
Silver Sponsors including Bruwink,
BulkWhoisFinder, Verisign
(.com/,net), Catchy.com, JUA
Domain Name Consultants, NameCatch.org/.in,
OpenSRS and Uniregistry.
We
are looking forward to our first
visit to India, meeting that
country's up and coming domain
investors and covering it all for
you. Look for our first pre-show
post from Bangalore in this column
Wednesday with daily reports
continuing through the conclusion of
DomainX 2015 Saturday.
Lobby
of the Taj West End Hotel in
Banglore, India where
DomainX 2015 will be held Friday
& Saturday (August 7 & 8).
|