THE BRIDGE

tag Nodes

Japan’s Sekai Lab buys Danish agency Nodes to scale up outsourced app devs in Europe

SHARE:

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Copenhagen-headquartered app agency Nodes ( English / Danish ) for Europe Expansion. This acquisition makes Monstar Lab secure three Nodes’ office locations: Copenhagen (Denmark), Aarhus (Denmark) and London (UK), meaning that the Tokyo company now has 17 locations worldwide for sales and app development efforts. Financial details of the deal such as the investment ratio and the payment date have not been disclosed. When Monstar Lab acquired Manila-based Ideyatech, the former rebranded the latter into Monstar Lab Manila. It is still unclear if the Tokyo company intends to unify its brand with Nodes because the Danish company has a certain level of strong brand presence in the European market where it has clients of globally renowned companies like Samsung, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline. With the acquisition at this time around, Monstar Lab has their presence in three major economies: North America, Asia and Europe. The company claims that it will collect around half of all revenue from outside Japan in 2019. Node is a mobile app development agency founded back in 2008, employing 75 people…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Monstar Lab, the company providing crowdsourced offshore app development service Sekai Lab, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Copenhagen-headquartered app agency Nodes ( English / Danish ) for Europe Expansion. This acquisition makes Monstar Lab secure three Nodes’ office locations: Copenhagen (Denmark), Aarhus (Denmark) and London (UK), meaning that the Tokyo company now has 17 locations worldwide for sales and app development efforts. Financial details of the deal such as the investment ratio and the payment date have not been disclosed.

When Monstar Lab acquired Manila-based Ideyatech, the former rebranded the latter into Monstar Lab Manila. It is still unclear if the Tokyo company intends to unify its brand with Nodes because the Danish company has a certain level of strong brand presence in the European market where it has clients of globally renowned companies like Samsung, Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline. With the acquisition at this time around, Monstar Lab has their presence in three major economies: North America, Asia and Europe. The company claims that it will collect around half of all revenue from outside Japan in 2019.

Node is a mobile app development agency founded back in 2008, employing 75 people consisting of developers, designers and mobile consultants in three locations in Denmark and UK. Carnival.io, the mobile marketing-focused subsidiary of cloud-based customer relationship management platform developer Sailthru, has chosen Nodes as one of the top 12 European Mobile Agencies in 2017.

Regarding the reasons why Monstar Lab has chosen Nodes for acquisition, the Tokyo company answered that:

  1. Nodes has established its brand in multiple countries in Europe
  2. Nodes has talented engineers and designers
  3. Nodes has a cultural background which may create synergy with Monstar Lab

Hiroki Inagawa, CEO of Monstar Lab, gave us a comment on the acquisition:

Nodes has excellent engineering skills and design capabilities, and is also one of the few companies that has successfully established a high position in the UK market. Our decisive factor was their young founders and management teams with high motivation for growth.

Going forward, we will aim to be Europe’s No.1 digital product developer with Nodes as our regional headquarters, and also aim to be the world’s No.1 digital product developer with all Monstar Lab group companies.