South Yorkshire IT and quality engineering consultancy, Shift Left, has been acquired by Planit, an Australian-headquartered global leader in quality engineering and application testing services.
The move sees Shift Left join the Tokyo-based NRI Group, employing 13,500 people around the world and with a market capitalisation of US$15.7bn.
Following its acquisition of Shift Left, Planit is now contending for the second spot amongst specialist quality engineering service providers, worldwide.
Mike Weale, CEO of Planit, said: “We are thrilled to welcome Shift Left to the Planit group and leverage their suite of services and strong customer base to expand our offerings throughout the UK and into Europe. We see these regions as key to executing our Vision 2030 strategy, and have aggressive plans for expansion. Thanks to this acquisition, the combined entity has now grown beyond 300 people in the UK.”
The deal comes just four months after Planit’s acquisition of its primary competitor in the New Zealand market, Qual IT, and cybersecurity specialist, SEQA.
Shift Left was co-founded by Alan Upton and Dave Rigler seven years ago in Yorkshire, and has since grown to service clients across the UK and Europe.
“This is an incredible milestone for Shift Left and will launch the next stage of growth,” says Dave Rigler, co-founder of Shift Left.
Addressing why the deal came about, Rigler said: “We were listening to the needs of our customers, and we could clearly see the opportunity to expand our global reach and extend our service offerings. We also knew that achieving this on our own would be possible but would take significant time and investment. We needed to find a partner with a substantial global footprint and Planit was the logical choice.”
“Not only did we have a historical relationship, we also knew Planit had the capability and capacity to move our business forward. We’ve seen Planit’s great work first-hand at clients like Specsavers, where they have over 100 quality specialists servicing their end-to-end quality needs,” said Rigler.
The Shift Left brand will remain in operation with its senior management continuing to lead the business, its employees, and client engagements.
Shift Left joins Planit locally in the United Kingdom and globally into the wider business footprint across Australia, India, New Zealand and the Philippines. The acquisition figure is confidential.
