Mumbai: You own or manage a company, and you are seeking a presence in the cyberspace. But there is a technical snag. Some cyber-squatter, out to make a fast buck, has already got a dotcom registered in your company's name.

Relax. There is no need to cough up a ransom to free the domain name from the grabber. Just contact Net4India, the largest domain name registration company in South Asia, and register your company's website with a dotinfo tag.

As it is, dotcoms are passing through a bad time. And, the Internet is about information. So settling for a dotinfo domain name is, in fact, in tune with the changing times.

As a matter of fact, .info is the first top-level domain name extension after .com, .net and .org in over a decade. It will be based on classification of information. The .info domain name will be available to the corporate and individuals on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Along with the .info extension tag, Net4India has also announced other six high-level domain extensions - .biz, .name, .co-op, .pro, .museum and .aero.

Says Net4India CEO Jasjit Sawhney: ''Dotinfo offers the opportunity to reach the worldwide audience during the next phase of Internet's evolution. It will help in bringing an element of classification on the Internet, making it easier for customers to access information. We expect that out of the two lakh domain names booked this year, 15 per cent will be with .info.''

Worldwide the demand for domain names is expected to reach over 40 million by the end of 2001, with a sustained growth expected for two-to-three years. ''Any organisation that plans to have, or already has, an Internet presence must go beyond the dotcom naming strategy. They must book multiple domain names to protect their brands on the web. The seven new top-level domain names approved by ICANN would be the beginning of just that,'' says Sawhney.

A domain name under the .info classification can be booked for a period of two years. Net4India is a part of the UK-based Sawhney Group of companies. Net4India launched its Internet services in India in December 1999. The company holds a category 'A' ISP license and has presence in New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad.

Launched in March 2000, Net4Domains, a part of Net4India, commands more than 50 per cent of the market and is the single-largest domain name booking company in South Asia. Net4Domains also offers 30 international domain suffixes including .co.uk (for United Kingdom companies), .de (Germany), .il (Israel) and more, besides top-level domains like .com, .net and .org . The company has registered more than 1,00,000 domains till date.

Net4India has world-class Internet data centres in six cities. The company is tying up with agencies to provide a secure payment process for clients hosting transaction sites. Net4India also provides dedicated server co-location facilities across the country, and is currently one of the leading players in this field.