Domain Registrar Purchased for $22 Million

by Kevin Murphy

Indom, a medium-sized European domain name registrar, has been bought for €16.9 million ($22 million) in cash.

The buyer is Group NBT, an acquisitive British registrar holding firm that by now owns NetBenefit, NetNames, Easily.co.uk, Ascio and Envisional.

Indom, founded in 1999 focuses primarily on the French corporate market. It had revenue of €6.6 million ($8.7 million) in 2009, was slightly profitable, and is growing at 18% this year.

NBT stated in a statement that clients will be migrated to NBT’s platform over a two-year period.

CEO of NBT, Geoff Wicks, stated:

This transaction is of significant strategic importance for Group NBT and is precisely the type of buyout we want to make. Not only does it provide scale in an notable part of the European market which we will leverage in a number of ways, but it helps to cement our position ahead of our competitors in this attractive market.

The deal comes less than a week following Indom co-founder Stephane Van Gelder was elected chairman of the GNSO Council, ICANN’s major domain name policy-making committee, replacing VeriSign’s Chuck Gomes.

Kevin Murphy is a journalist covering domain names and writes the Domain Incite blog.