|
One
lesson that Insarov learned early on is how important
it is to be ready to change direction if need be.
Intis Telecom offered several services, including
domain hosting, but it was global messaging
services that really sent the company into orbit,
even though SMS was just meant to be a side product
(one that he first developed just a year after
starting his first business). Andrey detailed how the
unexpected success of SMS forced him to switch
gears - a decision that turned out to be one of
the best he ever made.
|
"The path of an entrepreneur, especially in a small business, is quite
unpredictable," Insarov said.
" Many factors come into play; market conditions, opportunities, chance, funding and even family situations. It’s
unique, like a pattern on a piece of Damascus steel. This indeed proved to be the case with the business of
SMS notifications. At first, it was nothing more than a sideline for me, an
add-on to my hosting business.
However, the financial potential of it prompted me to shift focus. The main factor was the very strong growth of the SMS market between 2009 and 2011; traffic volumes
have increased thousands of times. In addition, there were very few companies focused on providing messaging solutions for small and medium-sized businesses - the SME sector. We saw the opportunity and Intis Telecom
was created to address this growing
niche. It’s worth noting that some clients, who were startups 10 years ago, have subsequently grown into large companies and continue to work with us." |
|
Intis
Telecom now operates in 180 countries around
the world. Growing a company into that size required
navigating through more challenges than the average
business person could even imagine. We asked Andrey
about what it takes to successfully scale up
a business in the way he has with Intis.
"First, no matter how trite it sounds,
my team helped me a lot; all of them - developers and managers
alike," Insarov said. "Most of our employees have been with us for over 10
years. In 2010, the company was just me and I hit my limits and simply
could not do any more on my own; one day it became impossible to perform all the functions of a manager, system administrator, accountant, technical support and a marketer. I had to build a team around me and the company grew on the back of
that. Given I had experience in all areas of the business, it made it somewhat easier to establish the processes and tasks for my employees and it allowed me to more effectively monitor performance across all areas."
|
|
"I've always been interested in international business, particularly since the time Internet services hit the global market and a huge demand for related solutions
arose," Insarov noted. " Naturally, each location has its own nuances, but in general,
you’re separated from new markets only by the presence of language localization
and convenient payment methods. I was literally amazed by the
Mobile World Congress exhibition which I first attended in 2012. It was a real Tower of Babel with companies and visitors from all over the world. From that moment on I began to purposefully move towards
expansion, first to Europe, and then to other continents."
"The rest is a matter of technique and I usually looked to the services of relevant, local consultants to solve problems related to such things as the opening of companies in
Lithuania, the UK, and the USA. Intis Telecom generally tries to
outsource tasks that aren’t directly related to the delivery
of its principal solutions. It allows for focus and provides for economic efficiency too, negating the need to keep on a large team of direct employees." |
Turning
to the news that put Intis Telecom front and center
on the domain industry's radar, the acquisition of IT.com,
we learned that Insarov considered multiple
ways to utilize the domain before deciding to make
it into a domain registry. The 3rd level
domains the company sells based on the it.com
foundation, makes names like buy.it.com, own.it.com,
etc. possible. IT also represents a massive global
industry where IT.com would have been the world's
best brand name online - and, of course, Intis
Telecom's initials are IT, makiing IT.com the
ultimate vanity name. So, we had to wonder how much
Insarov wrestled with the options before deciding to
share the name with domain registrants around the
world.
"To be honest, at first I had the idea to
create a marketplace focused on the IT segment, but I quickly abandoned this
idea," Insarov said. "There were several reasons. One was the problem of a “cold” start, when the absence of clients and performers turns into a vicious
circle. The presence of multi-million dollar competitors such as Fiverr and
Upwork didn’t inspire confidence. In addition, the SMS business is currently the principal focus of the company, and any attempt to launch such a large-scale project would inevitably lead to a loss of focus and impact our core business to varying degrees in various ways. We therefore decided on a
simpler approach. Being a domain registrar is much simpler than building and running a marketplace from both a technical and organizational point of view. Also, the domain business itself was something familiar to us
given the origins of Intis as a hosting
company.
The
it.com domain registration service has only been
running for eight months now but that has been
enough time to give Insarov some early insight into
the prospects for the new venture and how to market
it in a way that takes advantage of the
multi-faceted IT term going forward.
|
"Our strategy is to gradually launch with performance tracking, reactions of clients and partners. Since November 2021, when we first presented it.com during
Lisbon’s Web Summit, we’ve participated in several industry events:
CloudFest and Mobile World Congress
for mobile, Affiliate World Congress,
the OMR Festival in Hamburg
where we partnered with Sedo for marketing,
We Make Future
Italia and London Tech Week for startups.
Based on the results, we’ve identified 3 independent markets; a
backup zone for the Italian national zone
(ccTLD) .it, international users from all over the world that want to use English in their website names,
building the word “it” into them and finally, projects which are related to the
IT industry - as a competitor to the
.io zone. An additional benefit is that the Italian and international markets practically don’t overlap, since the Italian spelling of words rarely coincides with English. We plan to succeed in
all these potential markets and operate using all the modern practices of Internet marketing and
promotion," Insarov said. |
it.com's
Social Media Manager, Tatyana
Tarassenko,
and Business Manager Rolandas Japertas (right)
welcomed attendees to the company's
booth at the
June 2022 We Make Future conference in
Italy. |
Andrey
added, " From the product sales perspective, we’ve set ourselves a rather aggressive target - to hit the bar of
100,000 domains sold in 3 years. To achieve this though, we have to overcome certain potential drag factors that could hinder us; a rather high price (compared to .com), the registrars' and customers' conservatism, not being accustomed to 3rd level domains, and even the global economic recession underway...Therefore, the only way forward is to convey to the widest possible audience information about the it.com domain zone, its capabilities and benefits. In addition, the modern world is so
over saturated with various goods and services that without good advertising, it’s impossible for so many to have a chance of meeting sales targets."
Looking
ahead, at this writing, a war in Ukraine, inflation and
supply chain issues all have people wondering if the
global economy is headed for a downturn than would make it
more difficult to maintain growth. Whatever happens,
Insarov believes it.com is now well positioned for any ups
and downs that may be ahead.
"Fortunately, we’ve already come a long
way," Andrey said. "We’ve launched a domain zone along with software for interacting with registrars - EPP and API. And we’ve been very busy on the marketing front. Our focus is now therefore on
building a pipeline of solvent, loyal clients and
building reliable relations with registrars. Moreover, both of these directions will
reinforce each other. As the popularity of it.com grows, users will buy domains in this zone more often, which will motivate more and more new registrars to become our partners and sell our domains, in turn increasing their recognition and popularity. Together with the Intis Telecom team,
we’re ready for any challenges thrown our way and believe that even global economic difficulties will only slow us down, not ultimately disrupting our plans."
|
