Who beat Jack Ma apparently shares the same view on domains — The man
Robin Zeng’s firm belatedly purchased the matching .brand.
It’s a strange world. A teacher (Jack Ma) founded an internet firm and became very rich, then a farmer (Robin Zeng) established a battery firm and became even richer. Today, Zeng beats Ma with his massive $50 billion net worth. In the domain space, still, Ma led and Zeng followed.
In 1999, Ma founded Alibaba. He knew the importance of .com and brand-matching right away, so he invested $4,000 to acquire Alibaba.com from its Canadian owner.
Zeng was less fortunate. When he established CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited) in 2011, he understood the importance of .com but not brand-matching. He registered CATLbattery.com instead.
Within a decade, Zeng created the largest global producer of rechargeable cells for plug-in vehicles and the firm went public in 2018. Finally, Zeng followed the footsteps of Ma and purchased CATL.com from California Association of Texas Longhorn Breeders in 2019 when the association switched its domain to CATLbreeders.com.
Interestingly, both Alibaba .cn and CATL .cn do not resolve. Unlike Alibaba, CATL also has the Chinese brand “Ning De Shi Dai” (宁德时代), but a 3rd party owns the matching NingDeShiDai .com.
So, what can we learn from this story?
- .com is king in corporate China and it is the first choice.
- .cn is secondary and optional to Chinese firms.
- English brand is more notable than Chinese brand in domain buyout.
- Brand-matching creates opportunities to sell domains as upgrades.
