NEW DELHI: Here is a good news for all small and medium businesses in the country: The search giant Google is offering free top-level domain (TLD) registration and website hosting services to all SMBs in India to launch a website as part of its "India Get Your Business Online" initiative.

The hosting services will be provided by US-based Web host HostGator. The company will also offer free support in creating, hosting and managing the website for a period of one year without any cost through its toll free call centres.

All that a business would require to take his business online is address, phone number and TAN/CIN or PAN as verification. As for design, there are 90 readymade design templates for an SMB to choose from.

After a year, website owners will have the option to renew their domain name and hosting on a paid basis or cancel the service.

Under the initiative, all participant businesses will also get free email addresses through Google Apps and a free Google AdWords coupon worth $51 (Rs 2500 approximately) to get started with promoting their site on Google's advertising network.

India is said to be the 18th country Google is rolling out this programme in. According to Nikesh Arora, SVP and chief business officer, Google Inc, the company started this programme primarily in Europe in 2010.

According to Google, while India is home to an estimated 8 million small medium businesses, only about 5% have a website.

Banking major ICICI too is among the partners for the programme.