About HDFC: Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited (HDFC) was established in 1977 with the primary objective of meeting a social need of encouraging home ownership by providing long-term finance to households. A pioneer and leader in housing finance in India, since inception, HDFC has... Read more
About HDFC:
Housing Development Finance Corporation Limited (HDFC) was established in 1977 with the primary objective of meeting a social need of encouraging home ownership by providing
long-term finance to households. A pioneer and leader in housing finance in India, since inception, HDFC has assisted close to 4 million customers to own a home of their own, through cumulative housing loan approvals of over INR. 3.73 trillion and disbursements of over INR. 3.02 trillion, as at March 31, 2011. It is one of the largest mobiliser of retail deposits with a deposit base of over INR 340 billion from over 1 million depositors.
HDFC has a wide network of 304 offices (which includes 76 offices of HDFCʹs wholly owned distribution company HDFC Sales Private Limited) catering to over 2,400 towns and cities spread across the country. It also has offices in Dubai, London and Singapore and service associates in the Middle East region, to provide housing loans and property advisory services to Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) and Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs).In the online space, HDFC reaches out to its customers through its web site (www.hdfc.com) and .mobi-site (m.hdfc.com) in the mobile space.
Over the years, HDFC has emerged as a financial conglomerate with its presence in the entire gamut of financial services including banking, insurance (life and non-life), asset management, real estate venture capital and more recently education loans. The HDFC group manages assets of over INR 6.3 trillion and has a customer base of over 39 million.
For the year ended March 31, 2011, HDFC's gross income were INR 128.78 billion and Profit after tax was INR 35.35 billion and the total assets of HDFC stood at INR 1.33 trillion
Mission of .HDFC
HDFC believes that the digital medium is fast-growing to become an indispensable medium for brands in the years to come. It therefore becomes imperative for HDFC to leverage our brand presence online and be technologically adept to reach out to young India.
Purpose of .HDFC
Currently, the web sites of HDFC are registered under several existing TLDs like ".com", ".in",".net" and so on, with different second level domains forvarious products and purposes. Various second level domains are registered to protect and defend the brand HDFC. Widespread possible naming conventions/ Cybersquatting in the existing TLDs may mislead any financial institutional customers to various phishing/malicious web sites, leading to online fraud. HDFC wants to have an exclusive ownership of a TLD, as it intends to have complete control on the second-level domain names to have "worldwide Uniform presence for the Brand HDFC" and provide confidence to customers by consolidating and simplifying their online identity.
Owning a TLD (.hdfc) can bring in multiple advantages and can help in building the brand equity in the following ways -
• Fully branded, owned and protected domain names
• Opportunity to showcase Brand Leadership
• First Mover advantage in the Home Loans Category
• Adds to Brand Equity and therefore complements Valuation
• Builds authenticity and trust for the brand on the Internet
• Reinforces association of products and services with the brand in the minds of consumers
• Unique brand platforms that are controlled, purposeful and relevant
• Builds customer engagement and increases long-term brand loyalty
• Shorter URLs help in top-of-mind recall for the brand
• Supplements navigation experience
• Increases geographical relevance to the brand
• Attribute-centric digital experiences can be built around second-level domains
• Aids in SEO, Search Engine efforts and optimizing media spends
• Defined URLs bring in security and adds to the confidence of online users
• Running Social Media Campaigns that brings in social relevance to the brand in the consumer space
• Building brand affinity with increased levels of customer engagement
• Enhances Online Reputation Management
• Protection against Brand Dilution
• Employee Engagement and internal communication
• Protection of Brand Goodwill
• Adaptable to numerous future innovations, businesses, services and opportunities
• Protection against likely frauds
• Reduces costs related to multiple domain purchase, security of data, malware, phishing etc
HDFC Limited witnesses a visitor base of 600,000 per month approximately, on www.hdfc.com.
These are users who are seeking information on various products and services, applying online for various products and services, accessing company's financial performances, seeking information on Company News and announcements, exploring career opportunities with the Company or existing customers accessing their Accounts.
In addition to the conventional media vehicles like the Print, Outdoors, Eventsand Exhibitions, Cable, Below-The-Line Activities etc., HDFC spends substantial amounts on the digital medium.
HDFC will be using .hdfc exclusively for its internal divisions, subsidiaries and appointed third party distributors. HDFC intends using .hdfc exclusively for its varied products and services. Currently HDFC has purchased more than 50 domain names on other TLDs such as .com, .net, .in to run its operations on the Internet. Currently www.hdfc.com caters to different housing and non-housing products like Home Loans, Home Improvement Loans, Home Extension Loans, Short Term Bridging Loans, Land Loans, Loan Against Property, Non Residential Premises Loans, NRI Home Loans, Rural Housing Finance etc. In addition, the web site also caters to the needs of existing customers.
HDFC estimates that in the first year after .hdfc is allotted to HDFC, around 50second-level domains will be registered; in the second- year around 200second-level domains will be live and in the third-year around 300 second-level domains will be live.
In the first-year, the focus of HDFC will be to cater to multiple purposes that will aid the business needs of the organization. For instance, the Online Access for existing customers will be separated out with a new second-level domain name www.customerservice.hdfc. Similarly, all home loans related content and details would be made available under www.homeloans.hdfc, the content of loan against property would be made available under www.loanagainstproperty.hdfc,details about deposit products would be made available under www.fixeddeposits.hdfc, and so on. All such second-level domains for various service-led offerings will also be created under the new gTLD of HDFC.
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