Announcement of the Acquisition of New Company of Infratop Inc.

SHIFT Inc. (“SHIFT,” headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Masaru Tange, CEO and Representative Director) hereby announces that it has resolved, at a meeting of the Board of Directors held on December 24th, 2024, to acquire training business and human dispatching business (hereinafter “the Business”) of Infratop Inc. (“Infratop,” headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Shota Isomoto, Representative Director and CEO).
Please note that this business acquisition is expecting two processes.
i. DMM.com LLC (“DMM.com,” headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan; Keishi Kameyama, CEO), a current parent company of Infratop, will establish a new company (hereinafter “the New Company”)
ii. Infratop succeeds its businesses to the New Company through absorption-type split.
iii. SHIFT acquires a 100% equity interest in the New Company.

1. Reasons for the business acquisition
Since launching its software testing business in 2009, SHIFT has provided software quality assurance services in a wide range of industries, from the enterprise domain to the entertainment domain. To spread the importance of quality in a market where a culture of outsourcing software testing has not yet been established, in 2012, SHIFT launched a corporate training business called “Hinshitsu Daigaku” (which means “Quality University” in Japanese).

The Business provides programming schools for inexperienced talents and engineers who want to improve their skills and provides career change support services for students. Although in programming schools in general, students tend to face challenges in learning new skills, the Business is enhancing support for participants by introducing a man-to-man mentor system, a support service that can quickly resolve students’ questions, and a system that can visualize the progress of learning and other measures. As a result, the graduation rate of students has been 97%*1. Moreover, not only achieving 98.8% of students have successfully changed their jobs, less than 5% of them have quitted their new jobs within a year. In this way, the Business is developing schools that appeal to students who wish to change their career or improve their skills.

As well as the programming school, the Business is now aiming at developing the corporate training business, and the SHIFT Group has decided to succeed this business. In the corporate training business, SHIFT’s “Hinshitsu Daigaku” will be able to provide its courses to a wider range of engineers than in the past by collaborating with the Business. In addition, by advertising the SHIFT Group to the students who attended the programming schools operated by the Business, SHIFT hopes to expand the numbers and layers of applicants for SHIFT and the SHIFT Group.

In the IT sector, where the shortage of IT human resources has been concerned for a long time, SHIFT aims to become a company that can develop talented human resources. Currently, SHIFT is engaged in the training program of “Hinshitsu Daigaku” for companies, and DeMiA Inc. (headquartered in Kyoto-shi, Kyoto, Representative Director, Kyoya Sakamoto) for students, and Kronos Co., Ltd (headquartered in Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Representative Director, Shoji Hatakeyama) for companies. On the other hand, this business has not only consistently discharged engineers capable of playing an active role in the field but has also built a business model that extends to support for career changes. For these reasons, SHIFT believes that by welcoming the Business into the SHIFT Group, it can provide a wide range of programs and realize support engineers’ career advancement with sympathy.

Although the Business does not meet one of our M&A standards*2, after participating in the SHIFT Group, it will improve its financial position by strengthening marketing and reviewing operational costs. In addition to that, SHIFT decided to acquire it due to its high compatibility with its existing talents training program.

*1 Achievements of 151 employees June – August 2023.
*2 SHIFT’s M&A criteria are as follows.
1. Whether their added value is high enough and unit price improvement can be expected
2. Whether their customer population be utilized
3. Whether they immediately contribute to profit over its goodwill
4. Whether the acquisition price is relatively cheap

Please refer to the link below for further information.
20241224_Infratop_EN