I Found Doordarshan.com on Sale for $2. Yes, THAT Doordarshan.

Doordarshan, the broadcaster that brought television to a billion Indians, has its .com domain listed on a Namecheap auction. The minimum bid is $2. The estimated value is $54,000. The number of bidders is zero.

This isn’t a joke. It’s a 27-year-old case study in what happens when institutions ignore the internet.

What Is Doordarshan

For readers outside India: Doordarshan (DD) is India’s state-owned public television broadcaster. Established on September 15, 1959, it is one of the largest broadcasting organizations in the world by studio and transmitter infrastructure.

Some numbers to put it in perspective:

Metric	Value
Satellite channels	35
Transmitters	1,412
Production centres	67
Terrestrial coverage	92% of India’s population
DD Free Dish subscribers	45+ million households
International reach	146 countries
Languages	22+

Doordarshan didn’t just bring TV to India. It shaped the national consciousness of the world’s largest democracy. The Ramayan serial that aired on DD National in 1987 was watched by an estimated 650 million people. During its 2020 COVID-era re-run, a single episode drew 77 million viewers, a world record for the most-watched entertainment program.

Its signature tune was composed by sitar maestro Ravi Shankar. Its iconic “DD Eye” logo was personally selected by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. For an entire generation of Indians, Doordarshan was television.

The parent organization, Prasar Bharati (India’s autonomous public broadcasting corporation), oversees both Doordarshan and All India Radio, covering 99.19% of India’s population through radio and 92% through television.

This is not a small brand. This is arguably the most recognized media brand in Indian history.

The Domain Situation

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Doordarshan’s official web presence lives entirely under government domains:

Property	Official URL
Doordarshan (main)	`prasarbharati.gov.in/doordarshan/`
DD News	`ddnews.gov.in`
DD National	`prasarbharati.gov.in/dd-national-homepage/`
Live TV	`prasarbharati.gov.in/live-tv/`
Prasar Bharati (parent)	`prasarbharati.gov.in`

Notice what’s missing? There’s no doordarshan.com. There never was one, at least not one owned by Doordarshan.

The .com domain has been in private hands since January 1999. That’s 27 years. For over two and a half decades, the .com of India’s national broadcaster has belonged to someone other than the broadcaster.

The Auction: $54,000 Domain, $2 Price Tag

As of this writing, doordarshan.com is listed on Namecheap’s domain marketplace. Here’s the live auction page:

doordarshan.com Namecheap auction listing showing $2 minimum bid, $54,000 EstiBot valuation, 12,000 monthly keyword searches, creation date 1999, and zero bids placed

Let’s break down those numbers:

Metric	Value
Minimum Bid	$2
Bids Placed	0
EstiBot Value	$54,000
GoValue	$5,202
Monthly Google Searches	12,000 for “doordarshan”
Domain Age	27 years (created 1999)
Extensions Registered	11
Ahrefs Domain Rating	1/100
Referring Domains	40
Majestic Backlinks	9
Majestic Citation Flow	12

Read that again. A domain associated with India’s national broadcaster, estimated at $54,000 by automated appraisal tools, is available for two dollars. And nobody has bid.

The domain gets 12,000 searches per month on Google. There are 11 extensions registered with the “doordarshan” keyword. And the minimum bid to own the .com is less than a cup of coffee.

An additional $18.48 renewal fee gets added to the final purchase price. So the total cost to potentially own doordarshan.com? Under $25.

27 Years in Private Hands

WHOIS data reveals the domain’s backstory:

Field	Detail
Registrar	NameSilo, LLC
Created	January 7, 1999
Last Updated	January 9, 2026
Expires	January 8, 2027
Status	clientTransferProhibited
Registrant	Hidden behind PrivacyGuardian.org
Registrant Location	Phoenix, Arizona, US

The registrant is hidden behind a privacy protection service based in Phoenix, Arizona. We don’t know who owns it. But we know they registered it in the early days of the commercial internet, before Google was even a year old, before Doordarshan had any meaningful web presence, before most Indian institutions even had email.

The domain was previously pointed at Afternic nameservers (a major domain marketplace), confirming it has been listed for sale in the past. The current nameservers belong to NameSilo’s DNS service. The domain status clientTransferProhibited means it’s actively managed and the registrar has locked it against unauthorized transfers.

This may not even be the first time doordarshan.com has gone through an auction. A domain that’s been on marketplace nameservers, changed registrars, and sat in private hands for 27 years has likely been listed, relisted, and ignored multiple times. The fact that nobody noticed or cared enough to write about it until now says more than the auction itself.

Someone has been sitting on Doordarshan’s .com for 27 years. And now they’re apparently ready to let it go for whatever anyone is willing to pay.

The $54,000 vs. $2 Paradox

How does a domain valued at $54,000 end up on auction for $2?

Automated valuations (EstiBot, GoValue) calculate what a domain could sell for in a motivated-buyer scenario, factoring in brand recognition, keyword volume, domain age, and extension. By those metrics, doordarshan.com scores high: iconic single-word brand, 27 years old, .com extension, 12,000 monthly searches.

Auction prices reflect what happens when nobody is paying attention. If the domain owner decides to let it go through a marketplace auction, the starting price can be as low as the platform minimum. Without active competition, a $54,000 domain can sell for pocket change.

The gap between estimated value and auction price is the gap between theory and reality. A domain is only worth $54,000 if someone is willing to pay $54,000. Right now, nobody’s willing to pay $2.

Should You Buy It?

Let’s address the obvious question: should you grab doordarshan.com for $2?

The temptation is real:

12,000 monthly searches for the keyword
Instant brand recognition among 1.4 billion Indians
A 27-year-old .com domain
Estimated value of $54,000

Here’s why you shouldn’t:

1. Trademark risk. “Doordarshan” is a well-known trademark of the Government of India. Buying it to profit from the brand name is textbook cybersquatting. Prasar Bharati could file a UDRP complaint through WIPO and likely win, taking the domain from you without compensation.

2. No legitimate use. Unless you are the actual Doordarshan broadcaster, there’s no legitimate reason to own doordarshan.com. You can’t build a business on it. You can’t use it for content without inviting legal action. You’d be paying for a liability.

3. Legal exposure. While India lacks specific anti-cybersquatting legislation, the Trademarks Act of 1999 (Section 29), the IT Act of 2000, and common law passing off doctrines all provide remedies. Indian courts, the Delhi High Court in particular, have consistently ruled against domain squatters.

4. The JioHotstar precedent. In 2024, a Delhi developer bought jiohotstar.com anticipating the Reliance-Disney merger. He demanded Reliance fund his Cambridge MBA in exchange for the domain. Reliance threatened legal action. The domain eventually ended up with two children (ages 10 and 13) who offered it to Reliance for free. The developer got nothing but public embarrassment and a cybersquatting case study named after him.

Buying doordarshan.com for $2 sounds like a steal. It’s actually a legal landmine.

India’s Cybersquatting Problem

India has no dedicated anti-cybersquatting legislation. The Information Technology Act, 2000, despite being India’s primary cyber law, has no provision specifically addressing domain name squatting.

This is a significant legal gap. The United States has had the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) since 1999. India relies on a patchwork of existing laws:

Legal Tool	Limitation
Trademarks Act, 1999	Requires registered trademark; doesn’t cover all scenarios
IT Act, 2000 (Sec 43, 66)	Designed for unauthorized access, not domain disputes
Common law passing off	Requires proving goodwill and misrepresentation. Slow, expensive.
INDRP (.IN Dispute Resolution)	Only covers `.in` and `.Bharat` domains. Useless for `.com`.
UDRP (WIPO)	Covers `.com` but costs ~$1,500 and requires filing internationally

The result? Government brands, major corporations, and public institutions routinely lose their .com domains to private registrants. The .gov.in namespace is secure, only verified government entities can register there. But the .com space is a free-for-all.

And for an institution like Doordarshan, the .com is often where the public looks first.

It’s Happened Before

The doordarshan.com situation isn’t unique. Indian brands and institutions have faced this pattern repeatedly:

Case	What Happened
JioHotstar.com (2024)	Developer registered domain anticipating merger. Demanded Cambridge MBA funding from Reliance. Got nothing.
DonateForDesh.org (2023)	BJP registered Congress’s crowdfunding domain first, redirected it to their own donation page.
YouTube.in	YouTube LLC had to file an INDRP complaint to recover its own `.in` domain from a squatter.
SBICards.com	State Bank of India’s credit card division went through WIPO’s UDRP to recover its `.com` from a third party.
BarkhaButt.com	Journalist Barkha Dutt’s name domain was registered by a squatter in Hyderabad.

The pattern is consistent: institutions don’t secure their digital real estate until someone else already has.

What Prasar Bharati Should Do

If Prasar Bharati wanted to recover doordarshan.com, the options are straightforward:

Option 1: Bid on the auction. If it’s genuinely available for $2 with no bidders, the total cost would be under $25. That’s less than the cost of a government tea budget for a single meeting.

Option 2: File a UDRP complaint through WIPO. Cost: ~$1,500 for a single panelist. “Doordarshan” is a well-known government trademark. The three UDRP prongs (confusing similarity, no legitimate interest by the registrant, bad faith registration) would likely all be satisfied.

Option 3: File a civil suit in Indian courts. The Delhi High Court has consistently ruled in favor of trademark holders in cybersquatting cases. This is the slowest and most expensive option.

The pragmatic answer is obvious. But the fact that this even requires a discussion, that India’s national broadcaster needs to “recover” the .com of its own name after 27 years, tells you everything about the state of digital brand protection in Indian government institutions.

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t really about one domain auction. It’s about institutional blindness to digital assets.

Doordarshan launched in 1959. The internet became commercially available in India in 1995. The doordarshan.com domain was registered by a private party in 1999. In the 27 years since, through multiple government administrations, the Digital India initiative, and a complete overhaul of the country’s internet infrastructure, nobody at Prasar Bharati secured the .com.

Meanwhile, Prasar Bharati has:

Launched the WAVES OTT platform (November 2024)
Invested ₹2,539 crore in the BIND modernization scheme
Operates 35 satellite channels reaching 146 countries
Built one of the world’s largest free DTH platforms

They can build a streaming platform. They can modernize 1,412 transmitters. They can broadcast to 146 countries. But they couldn’t register a domain name.

The doordarshan.com auction isn’t a security vulnerability in the traditional sense. There’s no CVE, no exploit, no patch to apply. But it’s a failure of digital governance that has been sitting in plain sight for over two decades.

And right now, it’s going for $2.

Don’t Be the Next Doordarshan

If you run a business, a startup, a personal brand, or even a side project: go register your .com right now. Not tomorrow. Not after launch. Now.

Domains cost less than $10/year. That’s cheaper than what Prasar Bharati will spend on legal fees trying to recover doordarshan.com through WIPO. The math is embarrassingly simple.

Check if your brand’s domain is available and lock it down before someone else does. Register the .com, the .in, and any obvious typos. It’s the cheapest insurance you’ll ever buy.

Doordarshan learned this lesson 27 years too late. You don’t have to.

References

India built Doordarshan to bring television to a billion homes. They forgot to buy the domain name.