Google offers free website to Indian SMBs

Google India has launched 'India Get Your Business Online', a countrywide program to help small and medium businesses in getting online with a free website, personalized domain and hosting.

The initiative offers a quick, easy and free tool to set up and a host a website.The company's goal is to help 500,000 SMBs in India to get online in a time span of three years.

''Google is working with a web hosting provider, HostGator for the program.The small business owners in the country can logon to www.Indiagetonline.in for using the tool to get a free, easy to build website and web hosting for an year powered by HostGator.''said the company release.

The small corporations will also get a customized domain (.in) name and free tools, training and resources to succeed online, according to the company.

''We want to see India's SMBs grow to become recognized Indian brands, and a presence on the internt is absolutely essential for this.This initiative of Google will help SMEs modernize their operations and reach out to more customers in India and abroad''. said Jairam Ramesh, union rural development minister at the launch.

The website creation tool offers free maintaining of a website for 12 months, and takes about 15 minutes for completion.The businesses can use there address, phone number, TAN/CIN or PAN to verify them as a business.

''While India is home to an estimated 8 mn SMBs only about 4 lakh have a website, and by partnering with HostGator we are changing the game.We aim to get atleast 5 lakh businesses online in the next three years''.said Rajan Anandan MD&VP, sales&operations, Google India explaining more about the initiative.

The businesses also gets a Google Apps account and other features like photos, logos, and integration with social media platforms.After the end of the year the SMBs can avail the service on a monthly fee basis to maintain their website using HostGator.