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HT Media Forays Into Mobile Marketing - Forms JV With Velti Plc
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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HT Media Ltd has formed a new joint venture with a London Stock Exchange listed firm Velti Plc to provide mobile marketing services to other brands, ad agencies and network operators in India.
Firefly e-Ventures Ltd which is HTMedia’s investment arm and has earlier acquired the likes of desimartini will have a 65% stake in the venture, which will be based in Gurgaon. Amit Garg who is the head of Firefly, will also manage the new venture.
Mobile marketing/advertising has standalone players like Mkhoj and recent entrants include international players like Admob who will soon be setting up base in India. HT Media’s new entity would be in direct competition with these two players. Also HTMedia’s own properties especially Mint which recently went mobile and was heavily advertised about as well.
The new entity would use Velti’s technology to deliver mobile marketing and advertising services throughout India. It will be interesting to see how HTMedia’s reach to traditional advertisers impacts their mobile marketing business. On the whole it should break some barriers and build the market as far as mobile marketing is concerned but more than sales and marketing what is really lacking on mobile is great content and the awareness and discovery of the same.
Even though there are an estimated 10-15 million active gprs users and mobile internet surfers a large chunk is still downloading ringtones and surfing adult content. This needs to change over the years for the advertisers to bet big money on mobile advertising.
Grt and Big step for HT media
Im a great believer that mobile will be the future in India. I think its only now that dotcoms have failed to work are these companies looking to go mobile. over time it remains to be seen how their individual strategies fare but as a whole mobile is future.