Bhavin Turakhia

Organization:	Directi
Affiliation:	GNSO
Region:	Asia
Country:	India
Email:	bhavin.t [at] directi.com
Website:	http://bhavin.directi.com
LinkedIn:	Bhavin Turakhia
Featured in the ICANN 57 - Hyderabad playing card deck

Bhavin Turakhia is Founder, CEO and Chairman of The Directi Group. He is also CEO of ResellerClub, .pw, LogicBoxes, and BigRock, which are all a part of The Directi Group.

In 1998, at the age of 19, he founded The Directi Group with his brother Divyank with a $600 loan from their parents. Directi is now an industry-leading Web Services Provider serving a growing customer base in 230+ countries; it is currently valued at $300+ million.

Mr. Turakhia has been instrumental in defining Directi's corporate structure and business process automation, which enables Directi to continue growing at triple digit rates year after year.

He is a frequent speaker at various seminars. He also serves as a technical advisor to the local CyberCrime Investigation Cell, and designed and launched CodeChef, a plaftorm for coding competitions.

ICANN Involvement

Bhavin formerly served as chairman for the ICANN Registrar Constituency for two consecutive terms. He was the youngest elected chair for this post in the history of ICANN.

In a letter dated December 8th, 2011, Bhavin Tuakhia, along with twenty-seven other domain name industry representatives, wrote to Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison to support ICANN's new gTLD program, in response to the Senate Hearings taking place on the same day. They supported ICANN's argument that the program would be innovative and economically beneficial, and noted that the program took a diverse group of international stakeholders years to develop. The letter can be found here.

Awards

He has won several awards, including the Entrepreneur of the year award in 2005.

Education

Turakhia was first exposed to computers at a young age, and dove quickly into learning basic programming, devoting much of his free time to the hobby. He began teaching teachers and other students, and by early high school had already programmed several games in Basic.

After high school, Turakhia studied science at DG Ruparel College in Mumbai, later transferring to Sydenham College, where he studied Commerce.

Generic Names Supporting Organization. Develops and recommends to the Board substantive policies relating to generic top-level domains and other responsibilities set forth in the Bylaws (ICANN Bylaws).