GoDaddy India adds Mithun power

GoDaddy has unveiled its new marketing strategy for India that aims to bring small and medium businesses online. As a part of the campaign, the company gave a preview of two TV commercials, featuring yesteryear Bollywood superstar Mithun Chakraborty. GoDaddy says Mithun still has a wide appeal across India, which makes him an ideal candidate for the new campaign, which was conceptualized by Bangalore’s Happy Creative Services.

Besides the two television advertisements, the campaign will also include search, display, email and social media marketing. Basically, it is an initial campaign to educate small businesses like local shop owners about the advantages of building a website to grow their business.

GoDaddy is clearly looking at small businesses with the ads that will go on air tomorrow. One of the commercials is about a young bakery owner whose bakery is devoid of customers, while the other ad showcases a leather shop owner who wants to run his business 24/7. Both feature Mithun explaining the advantages of setting up an online presence in his quintessential style, ending with him doing a GoDaddy dance step, that’s sure to inspire a lot of memes.

But with the new campaign, GoDaddy knows the Indian market poses some very typical problems, even when it comes to getting people to set up websites.

GoDaddy India’s Managing Director and Vice President Rajiv Sodhi told Tech2, “Though India is known as the IT super power; PC penetration has been quiet slow here. Moreover, culturally the world is mostly a DIY market while in India it is DIM (Do it for Me).” He further emphasized on the need to educate small businesses and start-ups to get online, which is a top priority within the company. To this end, GoDaddy has a 247 customer care centre, which will see a lot more development this year.

“An increasing number of small businesses in the country are turning to GoDaddy to help them establish their online presence easily and in affordable ways,” Sodhi said. However, he refused to give us any specific numbers pertaining to the growth in India. Last August, it revealed that its customer base has increased by 85 percent within a year of launch, but Sodhi declined to share growth figures from this past year.