Blyk founder departs

Antti Őhrling quits after five years with the opt-in ad pioneer.

He co-founded Blyk with Pekka Ala-Pietilä in 2006, and saw the firm change a few times as its adjusted to find the right business model for the right territory.

Blyk was the original pioneer of opt-in text advertising (in return for free or discounted credit), but struggled to make an impact in the west and ended up abandoning its MVNO ambitions to power services for operators instead.

That's what it's done with Orange and a few others in Europe, but it's been much more vocal about the success of its model in India, which it first entered in November 2010.

It recently confirmed 3m subscribers in the UK, Netherlands and India, of which 1.68m are in India where the firm works with Aircel.

Eric Kip, CEO of Blyk said: “This brings me back to the moment, when I first heard about Blyk five years ago.  A very simple, fresh idea that completely changed the way the telco and advertising communities had been thinking until then.