Gandi.net

Industry:	Registrar
Founded:	1999
Founder(s):	Pierre Beyssac Laurent Chemla Valentin Lacambre
Headquarters:	63-65 boulevard Massena Paris
Country:	France
Website:	gandi.net
Blog:	GandiBar.net
Facebook:	GandiBar
Twitter:	@gandibar
Key People
Arnaud Franquinet, CEO

Gandi SAS (Gestion et Attribution des Noms de Domaine sur Internet - Management and Allocation of Domain Names on the Internet in English) is the largest domain name provider in France, and web hosting service provider. The company's head office is in Paris.

Origins

Gandi was founded as domain name registrar in March 2000 by Valentin Lacambre, Laurent Chemla, Pierre Beyssac and David Nahmias, with the goal of opening up the domain name market. The project succeeded in that goal, and now sponsors some alternative organizations, "Gandi Supports".

2005 to present

In 2005, a 16-million dollar deal was signed, changing ownership and management to a team of internet experts led by Stephan Ramoin (formerly of MultiMania/Lycos), and three investors Joe White, Eirik Pettersen (co-founders of the online website creation application, moonfruit.com), and Warren Stephens. The purchase represented a positive changing force for the company and a decision was made to maintain the original philosophy of being an ethical alternative in the industry. Already, plans were made for steering Gandi.net towards cloud hosting services and other domain name services.

Gandi.net is currently one of Europe's leading registrars, providing over two million domains to customers throughout 192 countries.

In 2008, Gandi launched its Xen-based VPS cloud hosting service, based on a system of "shares" and scalable resources that can be adjusted in real time.

In 2010 it created a subsidiary company in the United States, Gandi US Inc., bringing Gandi closer to its American customers, both in terms of the physical location of servers, though also for customer support, which until then had been exclusively operated out of Paris, France. Other subsidiaries where set up in Luxembourg and Taipei.

Customer support

Gandi's strategy was originally based on word of mouth organic growth, vs. advertising . Customer support is currently provided in five languages (English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese).

Gandi supports

A strong supporter and advocate of open source software and rights, since September 2010 Gandi supports Creative Commons, providing them with free domain registrations and renewals, as well as VPS services.

Other projects that Gandi supports: Electronic Frontier Foundation, Students for Free Culture, The Spamhaus Project, Debian, Dotclear, Paris Web, World Wide Fund for Nature, VideoLAN, Template:Dn, Canard PC, International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Demotix, GoodPlanet, Jamendo, In Libro Veritas, and Arrêt sur Images le retour.