Bubble Motion, which offers a popular a Twitter-like voice blogging service in India, Japan, and Indonesia, has raised $10 million in new funding led by SingTel Innov8 with participation from Singapore’s Infocomm Investments in addition to insiders Sequoia Capital, Palomar Ventures, and NGC. This brings Bubble Motion’s total funding to $45 million.

Bubble Motion’s Bubbly platform is a voice-blogging phone service that allows people to share status updates in their own voice with fans and followers. It essentially takes Twitter’s model and applies this to voice blogging and mobile phones. These ‘bubblers’ record their voice update into their phone, and their followers everywhere are notified by SMS and prompted to click and listen.

The startup recently updated its platform to allow users to send notifications of newly recorded “Bubbles” to Twitter with a link to the message on Bubbly. Bubblers also send an update to Facebook friends whenever they update their Bubbly status and post text updates on the platform.

Currently Bubbly has over 7 million users across 4 countries and has delivered more than 250 million bubble messages through its service. The new funding will be used to bring Bubble into new countries outside of Asia. CEO Thomas Clayton tells us the company is eying entries into Brazil and Europe.

Of course entries into these markets involve partner ships with local carriers. Already Bubbly has relationships with Bharti Airtel in India, Telkomsel in Indonesia, and Globe in the Philippines. The company says SingTel brings a network of operator partners and contacts as an investor.

Bubbly faces competition from Facebook and Twitter in Asian markets. But Clayton says that the voice blogging aspect of the service, and the SMS-focused technology make it an ideal communications platform in countries like India.

Crunchbase

• BUBBLE MOTION

Company: Bubble Motion

Website: bubblemotion.com

Launch Date: 2005

Funding: $45M

Bubble Motion is pioneering social communication for mobile phones. Bubble Motion’s Bubblyâ„¢ is a social messaging service where people share SMS and voice updates with friends, family, fans and followers. Bubbly is like ‘Twitter with a voice’ and brings social networking to mobile phones. Bubble Motion’s innovative operator partner network includes telecom leaders in ‘mobile-first’ countries including India, Japan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Partners include Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Tata (Docomo and Indicom), XL Axiata, Globe, Telkomsel, Indosat, DiGi, Vodafone,...

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