Google India has unveiled a special initiative to make the oldest and India’s biggest wholesale and iconic Chandni Chowk market of old Delhi easily accessible to users worldwide.

 As part of this special project, Google India & HostGator went to each shop in Chandni Chowk and built over 2,500 free websites for businesses operating from the market.

 In addition to creating these websites for businesses, Google India also launched a common website www.chandnichowknowonline.in,  which provides an easy to navigate directory of all businesses from Chandni Chowk that now have a website.

 This initiative was launched by the Union Minister of Communications & IT, Kapil Sibal, who said, “Internet is becoming an engine of economic growth and is expected to contribute over USD 100 billion (INR 5 lakh crore) by 2015 to India’s GDP. I am happy to note that due to initiatives such as these small and medium businesses are embracing the Internet to increase their competitiveness in the global economy. I would like to congratulate all these businesses from Chandni Chowk who got a website from Google’s initiative and hope that many more businesses will adopt the Internet.”

 Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Sales & Operations, Google India, said, “For a business, having a website today is as important as having a mobile phone. And as part of our commitment to build over 500,000 free websites for small and medium businesses in India - we’re thrilled to share that we have now created over 150,000 websites for small and medium businesses across 7,850 cities in India within a year.  As we all know, the Chandni Chowk market was built in the 17th century and some of the businesses have been operating there for over 100 years. Creating free websites and giving them a new identity on the web was a special project for us. We really hope that this initiative will help us demonstrate the value Internet can bring to small and medium businesses and inspire merchants and enterprises in other markets to come forward to create free websites.”

Speaking about the project, Pradeep Jain, spokesperson of the Kinari Bazaar Gota Zari Association of Chandni Chowk (http://premandbrothers.in) said, “Chandni Chowk is a hub of small and medium businesses in north India with over 5,000 businesses that includes suppliers, exporters and wholesalers of all kind of products, but very few of these businesses had invested in a website. This initiative from Google has provided all businesses with a professional website, which will now make it easier for customers to find us online and help us to grow our businesses.”