Much has been written about the 2015 domain aftermarket boom created by Chinese buyers - but China presents a great opportunity for companies offering new domain registrations as well. French registrar Gandi.net saw that opportunity developing in 2014 and quickly began pursuing it by opening an Asian office that year.

Since then Gandi.net has integrated relevant regional currencies, added support in traditional and simplified Chinese scripts and recruited a solid Chinese-speaking team to assure a quality customer experience adapted to the particularities of the Asian domain name market. Those efforts paid off last week when CNNIC (operator of China's .cn ccTLD) held their annual Industry Partner Conference in Guangzhou 

China flag image from Bigstock

and gave their "Registrar with the Highest Potential" Award to Gandi.net. CNNIC conducts a comprehensive evaluation of domain name registrars each year, then honors outstanding registrars at the annual meeting.

A Gandi.net press release about the award noted, "In recognizing a European company, CNNIC is demonstrating its intention to develop an open, dynamic market in a space once reserved exclusively for Chinese companies."

Gandi.net CEO Stephan Ramoin said, "Our selection for this award from among a crop of largely Asian competitors shows our conviction to taking root in this market and growing along with it." Gandi.net's Taipei-based team has also put a premium on personally engaging the local community by attending conferences in China, Taiwan, and Japan. They also organized the first ever hackathon dedicated to a geographic TLD, (.Taipei) last month.

Gandi.net was founded in 2000 and now has more than 1.5 million domains under management.