Monstar Lab Acquires Manila-Based Enterprise Java Software Firm Ideyatech

Deal Overview

Monstar Lab, Inc. (headquartered in Meguro-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO Hiroki Inagawa) entered into a capital alliance with Ideyatech, Inc. (hereinafter, "Ideyatech"; CEO Allan Tan), a Manila-based enterprise software development firm, bringing the company into the Monstar Lab group as a subsidiary. The transaction was announced on December 16, 2016, and Ideyatech was integrated as Monstar Lab's thirteenth location under the Monstar Lab Manila brand.

This transaction is included here as an example of the prior principal experience of our team. Prior to founding WellBear, our Co-Founder Yuta Sakurai led this deal in his role as the internal M&A lead at Monstar Lab. This is not a WellBear advisory engagement, but rather a representative example of our team's operator-side experience executing cross-border M&A across Asia. Sakurai acted end to end as the internal principal: deal structuring, valuation, negotiation, due diligence, contract execution, and closing.

Deal Summary

• Acquirer: Monstar Lab, Inc.
• Target: Ideyatech, Inc.
• Location: Target HQ in Manila, Philippines. Acquirer HQ in Meguro-ku, Tokyo
• Industry: Enterprise Java Software Development
• Structure: Subsidiarization via Capital Alliance
• Our Team's Involvement: Principal
• Announced: December 16, 2016

About Ideyatech

Founded in 2007 and headquartered in the Philippine Stock Exchange Centre in Manila's Ortigas Center, Ideyatech, Inc. is a specialist enterprise software development firm with deep expertise in Java-based systems. At the time of this transaction, Ideyatech employed approximately 60 professionals and brought nine years of track record in enterprise Java system development. The company's proprietary document management system, Attache, had been deployed as the standard system across multiple Philippine Department of Justice agencies and approximately 75 percent of the Philippine legal community including major domestic law firms, a clear testament to the company's technical capability and market standing. Ideyatech also owned Open-Tides, a proprietary web application framework designed to quadruple engineering workflow efficiency. CEO Allan Tan, who previously developed his software engineering expertise at Accenture and EB2 International before founding Ideyatech, had built an internationally oriented business with clients across the Philippines, the United States, Australia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

About Monstar Lab

Monstar Lab is a Japan-founded digital product development firm built around a distinctive global sourcing model. At the time of this transaction in December 2016, the group comprised 130 domestic and 500 international engineers and creatives across 7 countries and 13 cities (Tokyo, Osaka, Matsue, Chengdu, Qingdao, Shanghai, Hanoi, Da Nang, Singapore, San Francisco, Dhaka, Cebu, and Manila), delivering web and application development services alongside music services and mobile gaming businesses. The group was in a phase of rapid geographic expansion, having established or acquired 10 locations across 6 countries in the prior two years, and this acquisition represented a deliberate extension of that growth trajectory.

The Combination

This transaction simultaneously advanced two strategic priorities for Monstar Lab: strengthening its enterprise systems development capability and establishing a second English-speaking delivery hub.

As demand for larger enterprise system development engagements grew, securing a partner with deep capability in this domain had become a strategic priority. Ideyatech offered both: nine years of focused experience in enterprise Java development, and proprietary assets such as Attache and Open-Tides that positioned the firm as a technology company in its own right rather than a pure services provider. The acquisition followed Monstar Lab's earlier investment in Vietnam-based LTT in September 2016, continuing a deliberate sequence of investments into enterprise systems capability.

Second, the Philippines holds particular strategic value as a development hub for the English-speaking world, and for the US market in particular, combining linguistic, cultural, and business-practice fluency. Following the establishment of the Dhaka, Bangladesh location in 2015, this acquisition gave Monstar Lab its second English-speaking delivery hub, reinforcing the group's ability to serve English-speaking clients while also creating a foundation for new service offerings into the growing Philippine domestic market.

Continuity

Ideyatech continued to operate under the leadership of CEO Allan Tan, with its brand, organization, and client networks maintained, serving as Monstar Lab's thirteenth location under the Monstar Lab Manila identity. The company took on the dual role of enterprise Java development hub and English-speaking client delivery center within the group. Monstar Lab also indicated that it would continue to pursue capital alliances with its partner companies as part of an ongoing strategy aimed at reducing partner financial risk while providing client companies with more secure development environments.

This entry is based on publicly available information (Monstar Lab, Inc. press release dated December 16, 2016). Non-public transaction terms are not disclosed.