VietNamNet Bridge – Nguyen Tu Quang, General Director of BKAV, a well known Vietnamese anti-virus solution provider, on January 4, announced that BKAV has successfully bought back the bkav.com domain name from a US Company at 2.3 billion dong.

The information has immediately stirred up the public, because 2.3 billion dong is really an exorbitant high price if noting one just needs to pay 10 dollars (about 205,000 dong) to register any domain names which have not been registered before by any one else. However, Quang has affirmed that 2.3 billion dong is the “good price” if compared with the great potentials of the company.

BKAV believes that in order to obtain the goal of listing itself in the top 10 leading anti-virus companies in the world, the possession of an international domain name with “.com” is the most important thing, and that the price is still relatively “cheap” if compared with the development potentials of the company in 2012.

Quang said that in fact, Bkav began interested in bkav.com domain name two years ago, when it drew up the plan to conquer the foreign markets. However, the actual negotiation only began two months ago. At first, the US company asked 150,000 dollars, or 3 billion dong. However, after a negotiation process, the company has accepted to sell the domain name at 100,000 dollars, or 2.3 billion dong.

“This proves to be the biggest sum of money a Vietnamese company has to pay for a domain name so far,” Quang said, adding that when products of enterprises become more popular, they should think of registering international domain names immediately so as to not to repeat Bkav’s case.

2012 would be the year when Bkav began reaching out to the international market after a long period of preparation. Therefore, even if the US company asks a higher price, Bkav would have to accept.

Also according to Quang, Bkav may choose another international domain name, such as “.net”, “.org”, or change the brand. However, this would be very costly, because the company would have to spend more money on marketing campaigns to help people remember Bkav brand. The expenses on the campaigns may be even higher than the expenses to buy the “.com” domain name, while this would also cause difficulties to the brand management.

Not only Bkav, but some other big Vietnamese technology groups and general corporations once lost their international domain names. The domain name “VNPT.com” was once registered by an institution in South Korea in October 2010, while “VNPT.net” has been owned by a South Korean institution since 2001.

Similarly, the international domain names coinciding with the names of Vietnamese economic groups such as Viettel (Viettel.com, Viettel.net, Viettel.org) have also been registered already not by Viettel. Only “viettel.ws” has not been registered by anyone.

The international domain name “FPT.com” which coincides with the name of the well known Vietnamese group FPT, was bought by a person in the US in 1995 who will have the ownership right until 2012. Meanwhile, Mobifone.com, which coincides with Vietnamese mobile network MobiFone, is now still owned by a South Korean person.

On December 14, the owner of viettel.com offered to sell the domain name at 1.5 million dollars, or 30 billion dong.

100,000 products would be enough to recover capital?

Quang believes that it is now the right time to make the decision to buy Bkav.com, when Bkav plans to reach out to the world’s market. If Bkav is late to negotiate for the domain name, the price would be higher than 2.3 billion dong.

He went on to say that if Bkav can sell 100,000 products at 10 dollars per each (Bkav Mobile Security) and Bkav Pro (299,000 dong), and reserves one dollar from each product, the money would be enough to buy bkav.com domain name.

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