The Indian conglomerate, Dabur India Ltd., has notified ICANN that it no longer wishes to use its delegated domain .DABUR. ICANN has accepted this, and soon the domain will be deleted from the root zone without the possibility of re-delegation. Dabur India Ltd. is a large corporation with over 100 years of history and revenue of over $1 billion annually. It produces cosmetics and personal care products, and also Ayurvedic alternative medicines and supplements.
.DABUR was delegated to the company six years ago and it tried to develop the domain, but unsuccessfully. Today there are about 10 domains registered in the zone, and only two of them are responding. One is linked to the company’s official website, dabur.com. Domain Incite sees a sad irony in this turn of events. One of the first things visitors see on Dabur’s official website is a very prominent pop-up warning of scammers exploiting the Dabur trademark to take money from people who think they’re signing up to be official distributors.
The idea of dot-brands is usually to give the consumer confidence that he/she is actually dealing with the company they expect. The domain name is used to confirm that a user is not dealing with criminals or fraud, and no additional pop-ups are required. It is unfortunate that Dabur India Ltd. failed to bring this approach to reality. However, this is not the first such case: 91 new dot-brands have lost their registry contracts.
