Google brings Chandani Chowk online

Launches a common website to bring over 2,500 businesses at Chandi Chowk

Google India today launched a common website to bring over 2,500 businesses at Chandi Chowk on to the web.

The website www.chandnichowknowonline.in, which provides directory of all businesses from Chandni Chowk has been a special initiative by Google India to bring India’s biggest wholesale market of old Delhi easily accessible to users worldwide.

This is part of its initiative to offer free websites and domains to small & medium businesses in India through the ‘India Get Your Business Online’ campaign launched a year ago. As part of this special project, Google India & HostGator went to each shop in Chandni Chowk and built over 2,500 free websites for businesses operating from the market.

This initiative was launched by the Union Minister of Communications & IT, Kapil Sibal, who said, “Internet is becoming an engine of economic growth and is expected to contribute over $100 billion (Rs 5 lakh crore) by 2015 to India’s GDP. I am happy to note that due to initiatives such as these small and medium businesses are embracing the Internet to increase their competitiveness in the global economy.”

Rajan Anandan, VP & managing director, sales & operations, Google India, said: “For a business, having a website today is as important as having a mobile phone. And as part of our commitment to build over 500,000 free websites for small and medium businesses in India - we’re thrilled to share that we have now created over 150,000 websites for small and medium businesses across 7,850 cities in India within a year.”

Chandni Chowk market was built in the 17th century and some of the businesses have been operating there for over 100 years. “Creating free websites and giving them a new identity on the web was a special project for us. We really hope that this initiative will help us demonstrate the value Internet can bring to small and medium businesses and inspire merchants and enterprises in other markets to come forward to create free websites,” added Anandan.

Pradeep Jain, spokesperson of the Kinari Bazaar Gota Zari Association of Chandni Chowk (http://premandbrothers.in) said: “Chandni Chowk is a hub of small and medium businesses in north India with over 5,000 businesses that includes suppliers, exporters and wholesalers of all kind of products – but very few of these businesses had invested in a website. This initiative from Google has provided all businesses with a professional website, which will now make it easier for customers to find us online and help us to grow our businesses.”