India is gradually waking up to the potential of mobile services as a medium to advertise, for there are few mediums which provide a cumulative addressable market of size of more than 400 million. Add to it the fact that advertising over mobile can be more precise and targeted resulting in optimum returns for the advertisers. Mobile Marketing is indeed picking up uptake in India and there is a strong need to bring in more accountability, uniformity and address concerns of the industry. And this is where, a new trade body representing industry players related to mobile marketing ecosystem, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) finds relevance.

 “We are here to educate and evangelise mobile marketing as a medium to all people concerned with and belonging to this ecosystem,” says Rajiv Hiranandani, Co-Chair MMA India in an interaction with TelecomTiger.

Spelling out the trade body’s three point objective with educating and eventualising as mentioned earlier also included, Rajiv adds that with MMA in place in India, the industry can expect following of common standards for research and methodology which till now were varied in nature with each player adopting a different practice altogether. The other objective is to make the industry adopt Consumer Best Practises and Case Studies for reference and measurement.

While MMA globally has more than 700 industry players as its members, the India Chapter which has set foot recently in May has already witnessed more than 40 membership registrations and Rajiv expects this figure to rise to 70-80 by the end of this year. The current members include names such as Admob, BDA Connect, Coca-Cola, Google, Group M, Hungama, Indiagames, Microsoft, mKhoj, mobile2win, Nokia, Reuters, Vodafone, Tata Teleservices, Velti and Yahoo! India among others.

When pointed out to the fact there are some trade associations related to the field, Rajiv reasons that focus of MMA is very precise i.e. the mobile medium as a marketing tool. “We are in talks with some trade bodies with which we feel we can add more value to our objective. We are not here to confront any existing trade association.”

For a segment which while currently stands at near about Rs 125 crore but which is estimated to grow to Rs 300-Rs 320 crore within two years, MMA appears to be certainly the need of the hour.