The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) that routes domestic Internet traffic, is promoting local content across 22 Indian languages, and on the back of multiple awareness programs, aims to localize Internet domains. In an interaction with the PageOneAsia’s Alisha Fatima, company’s chief executive officer (CEO) Anil Kumar Jain talks about various initiatives including innovations such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT), and efforts to bring India to the leadership position worldwide in the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) space. Edited excerpts.

Tell us something on localised domain names and awareness programs?

Currently, the digital content in local languages is quite low in India. NIXI has made it possible to have domain in all 22 official languages, which is highest number in the world. NIXI has started various initiatives like Wikipedia contest, website development challenge to promote content development in local languages. NIXI is also working on voice to text and text to voice technology development so that maximum population may take advantage of Internet technology and future innovations like AI and IoT.

How are you promoting awareness? What are your key initiatives?

We have adopted a multipronged marketing strategy. On one side we have heavy presence online; we are also present in print and electronic media. Social Media and public relation exercises are help NIXI to adopt 360° marketing impact. We are encouraging our channel partners to touch on ground areas to have demonstrative effect on the prospective customer base. NIXI is also credited with localizing internet domains and encouraging websites to register with the .in address. Its efforts have seen fruition as India surpassed 2.6 million registrations of .in domain, making India the second-largest nation in Asia in the country-centric, top-level domain growth. Further, the company has also set out to promote local content with its .Bharat initiatives. Starting with five languages, the .Bharat domain is now available in all 22 official languages. This is the highest No. of domain in the local language with any country in the world.

NIXI has started various initiatives like Wikipedia contest and Website development challenge to promote content development in local languages which will benefit every Indian to adopt Internet. 

How are you seeing the progress of .in domain adoption? By when, you'll be able to narrow the gap with .com domain?

The progress of .in domain adoption is increasing with each passing day and there is a growth of 25% in past one year. The gap between .com and .in has been narrowed down to low levels, and we hope that by the middle of this calendar year, we should be able to cross .com. NIXI is now offering domain which user can have pride in their profession like engineer.in, advocate.in, hotelier.in, ca.in, shopkeeper.in, etc. We are now offering domains like rameshnagar.delhi.in to identify your place of belongingness. This way adoption of .in is expected to be multifold this year.

What are your views on IPv6 technology? How is this version really important?

IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. Every device that uses the internet is identified through its own IP address in order for internet communication to work. In that respect, it’s just like the street addresses and zip codes you need to know in order to mail a letter. IPv6 is important because it has following benefits: It gives very very Large address space as compared to IPv4; built-in security (IPSEC); there is no need of NAT (Network Address Translation); and it provides end to end connectivity.

How NIXI is growing this year when compared to 2020? What are your drivers?

The company expects a robust growth this year beating all expectations, placing it on track to be a leading force behind India’s ongoing internet revolution.

Internet Exchange - At present NIXI is connected with nearly 100 ISPs/CDNs. We are aiming to be market leader by the year end in terms of number of ISPs/CDNs and also by internet traffic.

.In and .Bharat domain - We have currently 2.6 million domain name registered with us. We plan to register a growth beyond 50% in both .in and .???? . NIXI desire that every important and critical business should own .in for data security.

IRINN - India is adopting ownership of IP addresses slowly but firmly. We are making efforts in ensuring that every user may get his/her desire numbers of IP addresses at most reasonable cost. NIXI is putting efforts that India may emerge as world leader in IPv6 adoption and IPv6 traffic by March 2022.