GRADITO Inc.

GRADITO Inc. (株式会社グラディート) is a Japanese information-technology company headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. It was established on 12 December 2022 with capital of 10,000,000 yen, and is led by representative director Kazutaka Ikebe. The company operates across four declared business lines: system development, business design, digital marketing, and business strategy consulting. Its stated mission is to improve the social standing and compensation of IT engineers in Japan, a theme it expresses through the slogan "BRIGHT FUTURE FOR ENGINEERS" and the philosophy of "raising the value of engineers." In system development, GRADITO covers web applications, smartphone applications, and other business applications, positioning development as a means to a client's strategic goal rather than an end in itself. Its business design practice focuses on clarifying the significance of a company or product and building brand loyalty and empathy to create differentiation. The digital marketing arm works on SEO/SEM, search-engine and social-media advertising, and access analysis and data analysis. The strategy consulting practice supports business-policy formulation, new-business planning, and the revitalization of existing businesses. The company is notable for its explicit critique of the Japanese SES (system engineering service) brokerage model, in which engineers are dispatched to client sites under labor-intensive, multi-tier subcontracting structures. GRADITO argues that Japan's shrinking labor force and a projected shortage of IT talent make such brokerages unsustainable, and it positions itself instead around direct transactions with large enterprises, in-house development capability, and the release of its own services supported by branding and marketing. It lists three career paths for its engineers: continuing SES-style assignments, taking on contract development, or focusing on developing the company's own services. GRADITO maintains its head office in Jingumae, Shibuya, and additional offices in Yoyogi (Shibuya) and Yokohama. Its management team includes chief technical officer Tomohisa Yamashita, who joined in September 2023, and non-executive director Manabu Sagawa. The company states a growth strategy that includes moving away from labor-intensive models toward proprietary services, actively acquiring small and mid-sized IT companies, and expanding business overseas.

GRADITO Inc. was established on 12 December 2022 as a Japanese IT company headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, with capital of 10,000,000 yen. It was founded and led by Kazutaka Ikebe, who serves as representative director. According to the company's own account, Ikebe was born in Saiki, Oita Prefecture in 1980, joined a Yokohama IT company after university, worked as a web designer and then in sales, and later became an outside director of an affiliated company in 2012, an executive officer in 2013, and a director in 2015, where he turned around a hotel-facing service and helped expand company-wide sales. The company's early management team was completed with the addition of Tomohisa Yamashita as director and chief technology officer. Yamashita, born in Kobe in 1974 and raised in Yokohama, had taught himself programming from junior high school and built a career in system development, including mission-critical financial systems and leadership of teams of more than 60 people. He founded an app-development company in November 2018 and joined GRADITO in September 2023 to pursue the goal of raising engineers' status. Manabu Sagawa, born in Tokyo in 1971, serves as a non-executive director; he is representative director of C.S.S. Holdings and has led the C.S.S. group, which works in securities-system development and cloud and data analytics, and launched the BtoB communication platform "Qube" in 2022. From its founding, GRADITO organized itself around four business lines: system development, business design, digital marketing, and business strategy consulting. It set up its head office in Jingumae, Shibuya, and later listed a Yoyogi office in Shibuya and a Yokohama office in Kanagawa. The company joined the Japan Information Technology Exchange (JIET), a specified non-profit corporation, and works with external tax and labor advisors. A defining element of GRADITO's public positioning is its critique of the SES (system engineering service) industry. The company argues that Japan's declining working population and projected shortage of roughly 790,000 IT personnel by 2030 will make labor-intensive, multi-tier SES brokerage businesses unsustainable, and that brokerages without in-house IT skills or proprietary services will decline. GRADITO presents its own strategy as the opposite: direct transactions with large enterprises, the ability to handle system development, branding, marketing, and consulting in-house, and the release of its own services. It states a growth strategy of moving away from labor-intensive work, actively acquiring small and mid-sized IT companies, and expanding business overseas.

• 2023

  Tomohisa Yamashita joined as director and CTO in September 2023.

• 2022

  GRADITO Inc. established on 12 December 2022 with capital of 10,000,000 yen.

A high-return, engineer-first IT company that rejects the labor-intensive SES brokerage model in favor of direct enterprise transactions, in-house development, and proprietary services.

• System development

  Web application development, smartphone application development, and IT engineering.

• Business design

  Website production, creative design, and branding support.

• Digital marketing

  SEO/SEM, search-engine and social-media advertising, access analysis, and data analysis.

• Strategy consulting

  Business strategy formulation support, new-business planning support, and existing-business revitalization.

1. 1株式会社グラディート | GRADITO |gradito.co.jp
2. 2ABOUT | 株式会社グラディート | GRADITO |gradito.co.jp
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4. 4GRADITO Inc. - Wikidatawikidata.org