Bangalore : The US-based Verio Inc (Nasdaq: Verio Inc), one of the largest Web-hosting companies in the world, hopes to host 50,000 to 60,000 Websites from India in the next one year generating a business of nearly $50 million. "This is really a tall order but we are really setting some aggressive targets", Verio Inc, director Asia Operations, Mr Patrick Hourigan told The Financial Express.This could be taken as a prelude to set up full-fledged Indian operations by the US company. "We are certainly interested in India and as things stand we could kick-start the show here by the last quarter of 2001 or early 2002", Mr Hourigan said. "Verio considers India a great potential market and the company would like to have a direct presence here", he added.
Verio currently operates in 170 countries and is one of the five companies having Tier-I Internet backbone network. The company has so far hosted more than 400,000 Websites all over the world. Besides Web-hosting, Verio will also have a closer look at the Indian telecom sector, Mr Hourigan said. "We can hope to have a direct presence in India only through generating such large volume of business", he added.
Verio Inc has recently signed a strategic tie-up with Indian IT firm Datapro to offer several Web-related services like domain registration, domain parking, Web-hosting on a shared or dedicated server as well as for managing commerce enabled Websites. Datapro chief executive officer S Abraham said the company plans to market Verio services through its reseller strength of 900 channel partners and 215 educational franchisee partners.
"With the availability of top-class hosting services at affordable cost, companies in India can look forward to a truly world class Web presence,'' he added.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.