Why Tirupur, a hub of domain providers?

If you wonder what Tirupur people are best at, other than wiggling cotton threads, the IT channel partners in ‘India's knitwear capital', are your answer.

"There are a lot of exporters in the clothing industry. Initially, they wanted a digital space to showcase their products. However, in course of time, they did brand building like uploading pamphlets and product catalogues online. This had given opportunities for many channel partners like us," said K Babu, CEO, Apex Info Solutions, Tirupur. Babu also added that there are around 1,000 to 1,800 exporters in the city and today almost everyone does online transaction. "The products manufactured here are exported to Europe and America. We, channel partners, provide domain, as mail communication is a must for these companies. A channel partner earns around 1 lakh through the initial investments and around Rs15,000 every year for renewal."

Today, Tirupur houses more than 15 professionally registered companies that gives many freelancers an opportunity to earn big bucks. "Once upon a time, the business people were not able to differentiate between a website and an e-mail. However, nowadays, they are very particular as they ask for a site that is compatible with android or i-phones," says Jawahar Alarm, CEO, Graphic Park Technologies. He also said that the exporters also change the look and feel of the websites very often and they also do a lot of online transactions to avoid any problems."

However, at the same time, there are a lot of problems impacting the partners in the city. The power-cut in Tamil Nadu had impacted the business to a large extent. There are also days when there are 16-hours power-cut in a day. Partners have demanded for an immediate solution for the problem.

Local vernacular dailies also report that the investments in Tamil Nadu are moving towards Gujarat and Maharashtra, which is a big blow to IT partners, employees and their families, in the region.