Startup Deep Dive : Radix Registry — how a Mumbai firm outbid Google for .tech and built a 9.5-million-domain portfolio

In November 2014 a company from Mumbai outbid Google for a single word. The word was .tech, the ending of a web address that did not yet exist, and the price was $6.7 million (about ₹64 crore). The buyer was not a search giant or a telecom. It was Radix, a domain registry that had grown out of a web-hosting business two brothers had started as teenagers, and it was quietly assembling the rights to sell the internet’s next set of addresses.

More than a decade later that bet has turned into one of the world’s largest portfolios of new domain endings. Radix runs extensions such as .online, .store, .tech, .site and .fun, reports more than 9.5 million domains under management, and in August 2026 filed 46 fresh applications in ICANN’s next expansion round. This is the story of how a bootstrapped Indian firm built a business selling the right-hand side of a web address, and where the model is fragile.

Quick facts

What Radix actually does

Radix is a domain registry, not a registrar. That distinction is the whole business. A registrar such as GoDaddy or Namecheap sells you a domain; a registry owns the extension itself and operates the master database of every name registered under it. Radix owns the right-hand side of the address. When anyone anywhere buys a .store or a .tech name, a wholesale fee flows back to Radix, whichever shop sold it.

• Radix operates 10 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs): .online, .store, .tech, .site, .fun, .space, .website, .host, .press and .uno.
• It sells wholesale to hundreds of registrars, which mark up and retail to businesses and individuals.
• It runs a premium-name programme, pricing memorable strings (like short or dictionary-word domains) far above standard rates, with annual renewals.
• It positions itself as “the world’s largest portfolio registry for new domains,” a claim built on domains-under-management volume rather than on any single blockbuster extension.

The founding insight

The founding insight predates Radix by fifteen years. In 1998 Bhavin and Divyank Turakhia, then teenagers in Mumbai, started Directi, a web-services company that grew into hosting, reselling and domain infrastructure brands including ResellerClub, BigRock and LogicBoxes. They learned the plumbing of the domain industry from the inside: how registrars buy from registries, where the margins sit, and how dependent the whole system was on a handful of endings dominated by .com.

So when ICANN, the body that coordinates the internet’s naming system, opened its 2012 programme to create hundreds of new top-level domains, the Turakhias saw it differently from most applicants. This was not a marketing exercise. It was a chance to own a piece of internet infrastructure outright, and to sell it forever. They spun Radix out of the Directi group specifically to bid. The bet was simple to state and expensive to place: as the web filled up and good .com names ran out, businesses would accept an alternative ending if it read cleanly. A shop could be a .store; a startup could be a .tech.

The auction years

Winning a new gTLD was not a purchase you could simply make. Each application to ICANN cost $185,000 just to file, and when more than one serious party wanted the same string, the tie was broken by auction, sometimes against the deepest pockets in technology. Radix filed among the largest application slates of any company in the 2012 round and then had to fight, string by string, for the ones it wanted most.

• Radix was described in 2014 as “Asia’s largest new gTLD applicant,” with bids covering roughly twenty desired strings including .tech, .store, .website, .online and .space.
• By the company’s own later account it secured rights to 9 of the 31 strings it contested, a hit rate that shows how many auctions it lost as well as won.
• .online was won jointly with Tucows and Namecheap in a shared auction, each party contributing an estimated $4 million to $5 million; Radix then bought out the other two to take full ownership in 2015.
• .website was secured in October 2013; .store launched in June 2016 after Radix acquired the rights.

The near-death risk here was not bankruptcy; it was buying expensive rights to endings the market might ignore. Hundreds of the 1,200-plus new extensions created in that round went almost nowhere. Radix had committed serious capital before a single name had sold at scale, and there was no guarantee that businesses would ever type anything other than .com.

The turning point: winning .tech

The single event that defined Radix came on 7 November 2014, when it won the .tech auction with a bid of $6.7 million (about ₹64 crore), beating Google, Donuts and other global players. It was the moment a Mumbai registry proved it could outspend Silicon Valley for a piece of the internet, and it gave Radix an extension with a natural, global market.

The numbers on each side of that win tell the arc. Before it, Radix was one applicant among many with unproven endings. After it, the company had a marquee asset: .tech would go on to be adopted by conferences, hardware startups, developer tools and, later, AI and fintech firms hunting for a name when the .com was gone. By H1 2025, Radix reported .tech premium registrations up 70% versus the previous half, including a single-character .tech name sold at $25,000 a year. The word Bhavin Turakhia said in 2014 he “could personally relate to the most” became the flagship of the portfolio.

The money behind it

Radix’s capital story is unusual for an Indian startup of its era: there is no venture round to point to. The founders funded it themselves, and they could, because the same years saw two of the largest exits in Indian internet history.

• Self-funded from Directi: Radix was built inside the founders’ own group rather than on outside venture capital; no institutional funding rounds have been disclosed.
• Over $30 million committed: by the November 2014 .tech announcement, Radix said it had invested more than $30 million (about ₹288 crore at today’s rate) to secure its new-gTLD licences.
• Directi sale, 2014: the brothers sold four Directi web-presence businesses (BigRock, ResellerClub, LogicBoxes and Webhosting.info) to Endurance International for $160 million (about ₹1,536 crore), giving them deep reserves.
• Media.net sale, 2016: Divyank Turakhia sold the ad-tech firm Media.net to a Chinese consortium (Miteno) for $900 million (about ₹8,640 crore), one of the largest ad-tech deals of the decade.

The practical effect: Radix could place multi-million-dollar auction bets and wait years for the domain market to mature, without the pressure of investors demanding a quick return. That patience is itself a competitive moat few rivals had.

How Radix makes money

The registry model is a wholesale toll booth. Radix earns every time a name under one of its endings is registered or renewed, and the economics reward volume and retention rather than one-off sales.

• Standard wholesale fees: Radix charges registrars a per-name annual fee for each domain; registrars add their own retail margin. Radix keeps the wholesale slice on every one of its 9.5 million-plus names.
• Premium names: short, keyword or brandable strings are priced well above standard rates and, critically, renew every year at premium prices. In H1 2024, renewals were $3.83 million of the $5.16 million premium retail total, with new registrations $1.33 million.
• Recurring revenue: because domains renew annually, a registered base compounds. Radix reported that in H1 2025, 85% of premium renewals were names being renewed for the third time or more, evidence of a sticky base.
• The part people get wrong: Radix does not primarily make money from headline domain sales. The durable revenue is the boring annuity of renewals across millions of names, plus the premium renewal book, not the occasional six-figure sale.
• Cost side: the heavy costs are the upfront licence and auction spend (already sunk), plus back-end registry operations, ICANN fees, and marketing to registrars and end users to keep sell-through high.

The numbers

Radix is private and does not publish audited profit-and-loss statements for the registry entity, so the cleanest verifiable series is its self-reported premium retail revenue by half-year, which the company discloses publicly. The figures below are premium-only and do not represent total company revenue; they are labelled accordingly.

Separately, the company has stated total revenue of more than ₹80 crore in 2017, projected to exceed ₹100 crore in 2018. For domains under management, the trajectory is clearer than the rupee revenue:

• Over 3 million domains under management by early 2018 (company-stated).
• .online and .site each surpassed 1 million domains under management in 2019.
• More than 9.5 million domains under management by 2026 (company-stated).
• H1 2025 premium registrations up 50% year on year, the strongest half in the registry’s history at the time.

Where the money comes from

The revenue mix is concentrated in a few extensions and a few distribution channels, and the surprise is how much of it is renewal money rather than fresh sales.

• By extension: in H1 2024 the top three premium earners were .tech, .online and .store, with .fun rising to fourth on the back of web3 activity. The portfolio leans on a handful of winners rather than an even spread across all ten endings.
• By type: renewals dominate. In H1 2024, renewals ($3.83 million) were nearly three times new-registration revenue ($1.33 million), and platinum sales were a rounding error at $0.03 million.
• By channel: GoDaddy and Namecheap remained the top registrars by premium revenue; Namecheap’s Spaceship registrar, despite fast growth, accounted for only about 2% of premium revenue in the H1 2024 report.
• The surprise: a registry that markets itself on new-name creativity actually earns most of its premium money from customers quietly paying to keep names they already own. Retention, not acquisition, is the engine.

The risks

Radix’s model is proven but exposed on several fronts, some structural to the new-gTLD industry and some specific to the company’s next moves.

• .com’s gravity: new gTLDs remain a small fraction of the market. Radix’s 9.5 million-plus names sit against a .com base of well over 150 million; a large share of businesses still default to .com, capping how far alternative endings can spread.
• Renewal dependence and churn: because renewals are the bulk of premium revenue, the model is only as strong as retention. Many new-gTLD names are sold on cheap first-year promotions; if registrants drop them at renewal, the compounding base erodes.
• Channel concentration: with GoDaddy and Namecheap dominating distribution, pricing power and promotion sit largely with a few registrars. A shift in their merchandising can move Radix’s volumes.
• Back-end migration risk: Radix announced in August 2025 that it would move its technical registry operations, roughly 10 million domains across its portfolio, to Tucows Registry, with the migration expected around November 2025. Moving that many names is operationally delicate; any resolution or provisioning fault would hit live websites.
• The 2026 capital bet: in August 2026 Radix filed 46 primary applications (“Radix Deux”) in ICANN’s next round, targeting AI, tech, finance and other themes with contested strings such as .agent and .agi. Like 2012, this demands large upfront capital and auction fights against well-funded rivals, with payback that is years away and not guaranteed.

The takeaway

The transferable lesson from Radix is about owning infrastructure rather than renting attention. The Turakhias could have kept selling hosting and ads, businesses that live or die on marketing spend. Instead they used the proceeds to buy a permanent toll on a slice of the internet’s naming system, then waited a decade for the market to grow into it. The payoff was not a single sale but an annuity: millions of names renewing every year, plus a premium book that compounds. It is a slow, unglamorous model that rewards patient capital and a strong stomach for upfront risk, and it only works because the founders funded the wait themselves. When the next expansion round tempts the industry back into expensive auctions, Radix’s history is the reminder that the money is made not on the bid, but on the fifteen years of renewals that follow.

Frequently asked questions

What is Radix and what does it own?

Radix is a domain registry founded in 2012 and part of the Directi group, with the legal entity Radix FZC. It owns and operates 10 new generic top-level domains, including .online, .store, .tech, .site and .fun, and earns wholesale fees whenever names under those endings are registered or renewed.

Who founded Radix and who runs it now?

Radix was founded by brothers Bhavin and Divyank Turakhia, who had earlier built Directi from Mumbai starting in 1998. Bhavin Turakhia is Founder and Chairman; Sandeep Ramchandani has been CEO since January 2018, having been with the company since its inception.

How much did Radix pay for .tech?

Radix won the .tech extension at an ICANN auction on 7 November 2014 with a bid of $6.7 million (about ₹64 crore), beating Google, Donuts and other bidders. By that point it had committed over $30 million to its new-gTLD programme.

How does Radix make money?

It charges registrars an annual wholesale fee for every domain registered under its extensions, and prices premium (short or keyword) names far higher. Renewals dominate: in H1 2024, renewals were $3.83 million of $5.16 million in premium retail revenue, making retention the core of the business.

How big is Radix today?

Radix reports more than 9.5 million domains under management as of 2026. In August 2025 it agreed to migrate its registry operations to Tucows, and in August 2026 it filed 46 new applications in ICANN’s next gTLD round.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Wikipedia, “Radix (company)” — founding, portfolio, milestones, Betting.online sale (accessed September 2026)
• Radix Registry, “About Us” (radix.website) — 9.5 million+ domains under management, leadership, 46 applications for the 2026 round (September 2026)
• PRNewswire, “Radix Wins Rights to .TECH, Defeating Google and Other Global Players” — $6.7 million bid, 7 November 2014, over $30 million committed (November 2014)
• DQIndia, “Radix Appoints Sandeep Ramchandani as CEO” — 2017 revenue over ₹80 crore, 2018 projection, 3 million domains, 9 of 31 strings won (January 2018)
• Domain Name Wire, “Radix sets record for premium domain revenue” — H1 2023, H2 2023 and H1 2024 premium retail revenue, renewals vs new, channel split (August 2024)
• CircleID, “Radix Premiums Surge as .Tech Leads the Charge in H1 2025” — 50% YoY premium growth, .tech +70%, renewal profile (2025)
• Wikipedia, “.online” — joint auction with Tucows and Namecheap, Radix buyout of full rights in 2015 (accessed September 2026)
• Tucows / PRNewswire, “Radix selects Tucows Registry as Back-End Registry Services Provider” — ~10 million domains migrating, announced 6 August 2025 (August 2025)
• TheDomains / CircleID, “Radix Announces Radix Deux: 46 Primary Applications in ICANN’s Next gTLD Round” — 27 August 2026
• Domain Name Wire, “Divyank Turakhia sells Media.net for $900 million” (August 2016); Endurance International Group / Wikipedia — $160 million Directi sale (2014)

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