Bubbly, the voice-based social media network, has been acquired by India-based Altruist, which provides telecom services in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The terms of the deal were undisclosed. Bubbly, which was known as Bubble Motion before rebranding last year, raised a total of $39 million, and investors, including Sequoia Capital, Comcast Ventures, Palomar Ventures, JAFCO Asia, NGP, Infocomm Investments, and SingTel Innov8, will be minority shareholders in the combined company.
News of the acquisition comes after a report that Bubbly, which is based in Singapore, was liquidating after acquisition deals failed to work out.
In a statement, Bubbly said it has 40 million users in Asia and the Middle East on its voice-based social media platform, as well as 140 million users on BubbleTalk, a voice SMS service.
In a statement, Altruist co-founder Dheeraj Aggarwal said “we are very excited about the addition of Bubbly… It’s a perfect complement to our European and African voice platform business which caters to more than 80 million active voice messaging users, which would immediately benefit from the addition of a proven, yet futuristic service.”
