The Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), which is supported by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), has elected Ajay Data as its Chairman.

Data, Founder and CEO at Data Xgen Technologies, is the first Asian to be selected for this post.

Representatives from more than 400 global IT companies from across 32 countries voted to elect the Chair at an ongoing ICANN conference in Japan, Data Xgen said in a statement.

UASG is an Internet community initiative, tasked with promoting universal acceptance of all valid domain names and e-mail addresses. The group’s members come from global IT companies likeApple, GoDaddy, Afilias, Google, Microsoft, XgenPlus and Verisign and it receives financial and administrative support from ICANN.

Data will take charge from Afilias Chief Operating Officer Ram Mohan.

“We will work collectively to break all barriers on internet,” Data said.

In July 2018, Data was appointed as a member of the Country Code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO). The ccNSO is a policy-development body for global issues regarding country code top-level domains (ccTLD) within the ICANN structure.