Real Estate = Domain Names

Navi Mumbai's Real Estate is high on the rise. The number of buildings being constructed is rising every single day. The sudden boom in Real Estate is attributed to the approval of an International Airport here. In ten years time, SantaCruz could be a miniature size of Panvel. What could've been bought for around 25 lakh ruppees (approx USD 56,000) a year ago, is selling for almost a crore (approx USD 225,000) today and would sell for many crores tomorrow. And of course, we have those Real Estate Investors who would ultimately expect a jackpot out of resale. Millionaires would be made out Navi Mumbai's immovables. [ I am still yet to hear about any building that comes close to Nariman Point's skyscrapers' skyline] On February 16, 2005 the govt. released the .in and .co.in domain name registrations to the public. Apparently, the .in booking reached 100,000 in less than 3 months. Today, venture capitalists are realising the Indian potential in www and the number of .in and .co.in registrations have accelerated over the last year. Its very common to find investors to buy a 'good looking' domain name and make a SEO-powered site out it who, finally, either sell the domain (sometimes the site too) for a high bid or mint out of Contextual Advertising. I was expecting the same for Indian TLDs but most of the domains are simply parked at sedo or some other domain auction sites. This is terrible, considering the fact that a lot Indians have turned into web-developers recently. We do not seem to find the time to invest in taking a risk to make a good site which has a potentially good ROI. Even though YPN and MSN ContentAds are for US customers only, Google Adsense is always ahead of others and the hare never sleeps. A lot of the common-word .co.in and .in domains are already booked, out of which most are for resale. Yet, I find that a lot of potentially useful domains are still available. For example, cpp.co.in, trend.co.in and words.co.in have never been booked so far. For $9 registration/yr + $100/yr hosting, Im sure one can make an estimated $5000/yr minimum. The Internet age may have started in the early 90's but for us Indians, it started early this decade. But where are these possible future Indian millionaires ? They are busy working on outsourced work which gives them a better paycheck and standard of living ahead in the timeline. Our country's non-decreasing poverty is the reason why most of us still dread to start something on their own in the IT field. 50+ years of independence and still running, we still have a long way to go to attain a slum-free country. Therefore its' totally understandable if the Govt has to prioritize on the better living of its citizens (I am totally unaware of politics, so don't mistake me for some party-member or activist !). Govt. will not fix all the potholes overnight - we'll have to buy triple-layered tyres. Don't complain that the Govt. is slow - there's over 1 billion people to manage in a densely populated country which is a result of 200+ years of chaos and 59 years of sedimentation. There are very few software product-based companies in India which have succeeded so far. Hmmm...I seem to have forgotten my primary point of comparison between Real Estate and Domain Names ! [ I'll update if I remember. ]