Indian web products and services company Directi has bought the domain name Ad.com for $1.4 million at a conference in Silicon Valley, reports Techcrunch. The domain was bought by Divyank Turakhia, CEO of Skenzo, a domain parking and monetization business, which is a part of the Directi group. Skenzo had raised money – for a minority stake – from the Ashmore Group last year.
A two letter domain name such as ad.com is quite valuable – and to be honest I initially mistook it for Advertising.com, which is a part of AOLs Platform A: AOL executives often refer to Advertising.com as Ad.com.
We’ve contacted Directi for what they’re planning to do with Ad.com.
(Hat Tip for the story: Ravi Venkatraman, who owns Ads.co.in. Thanks Ravi)
How much was In.com purchased for?
Two other “vanity” urls have been bought by Indian companies in the recent memory – Web18 bought In.com, and HT Media bought Shine.com.
The mystery around how much Web18 paid for In.com persists, and Web18 executives have been tight lipped about the price. According to reliable sources, there was a stock component to the In.com buy: that it was purchased for around $2.5 million, of which $1 million was in stock. Do note that this is still not official: at the time of filing this story, Surya Mantha, CEO of Web18 and Rishi Khiani, COO of Web18 were unreachable.
We wonder how much of the Rs. 35 crores that HT Media has invested in Firefly E-Ventures was spent on acquiring the domain Shine.com.
