Singapore-based Bubbly, which has been dubbed Twitter for voice, had been sold to Altruist Technologies, an Indian company that specialises in mobile voice services.

Bubbly, formerly Bubble Motion, is one of the more notable startups to emerge from Southeast Asia, and received funding from noted venture capital firm Seqouia. While initially focused on feature phone users, enabling them to send voice messages via SMS, it developed an iPhone app in 2012 and transformed itself into a social network featuring celebrities and other notable content providers.

However, the company has been surrounded by rumours of acquisitions for several months, with a number of deals falling through, and the spectre of liquidation hovering over the firm.

The acquisition by Altruist will see Bubbly remain an independant business, with no plans to integrate the two companies services beyond cross-promotion and resource sharing. Altruist intends to use both the iPhone app and the SMS-based Bubble Talk platform, which combined total 180m registered users, alongside its own one-to-one messaging platforms.

Altruist claims 80m active voice messaging users across Africa and Europe, which complements Bubblys predominantly Asian user base.