On September 7, Ruchit Kapadia couldn’t access his email. He was able to send emails, but not receive them. Kapadia works in Mumbai at his family’s garment export company, DKK Exports, and administers the bulk of his business through email. “My business has come to a standstill, because I can’t access my email,” he lamented. Since all his clients are based abroad, email is the only formal way he has of communicating with them. It’s the only way he can send invoices, take orders, and negotiate with buyers. Upon investigating, he found out that his company’s lease over his business’s domain, dkkexports.com, had expired on August 13. “I didn’t receive any renewal notice [for the domain name], because the registered email ID is a VSNL email ID, and VSNL doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. But his registrar, that is, the website where he bought the domain name, automatically offered him some more time to make a renewal payment. So he paid. But the renewal never happened. So Kapadia called up Net 4’s customer care number, 011-45980000. He was not able to get through to a real person. So he tried to call up one of their offices. Nobody picked up. He tried Net 4’s multiple outposts over the phone — Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata. Nobody was picking up. In Delhi, the number itself was disconnected, Kapadia said. He sent some people to the Delhi office to see if he could get in touch with someone in person.…
