That was the story of one such engineering graduate who uprooted himself and moved to a foreign country to pursue his tech dreams. Against all odds, that graduate would go on to co-found his own tech company and see his own net worth skyrocket in the process.
This is a story about Dilip Babu, the co-founder and CEO of Singapore Exchange (SGX) Mainboard-listed Info-Tech Systems, which provides a human resource management system (HRMS) platform and accounting software for SMEs. The software provider made its trading debut on July 4, 2025 and is one of the rare Singapore-listed companies that form part of the city-state’s fledgling local tech industry.
Babu told The Edge Singapore that he arrived in Singapore in the year 2000, in the wake of the dotcom bubble. What had initially been a boom that began in the late 1990s reached its peak in early 2000. The bursting of the bubble resulted in companies like Amazon and Cisco losing large chunks of their market capitalisation. Job seekers like Babu found themselves in a tough position when it came to landing tech roles.
Armed with nothing but his degree in agricultural engineering from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and a stack of resumes, Babu set out on his job hunt. Eventually, he was hired at Info-Tech Systems International, the predecessor company to Info-Tech Systems.
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“I joined this company as a software engineer. At the time, it was a five-man show company and from there I started my career,” Babu says, adding that he was given a monthly salary of $2,000.
This foot in the door marked the beginning of his relationship with Peter Lee, the founder of Info-Tech Systems International. The pair would go on to co-found Info-Tech Systems in 2007, with Babu at the helm as CEO and Lee as the board’s executive chairman.
Babu’s nearly three-decade-long tenure at the same company will come as a surprise to most tech professionals working today. These days, it is more common for software engineers to move between start-ups and firms as they seek more experience and negotiate higher salaries. Money, however, was not Babu’s chief consideration when he chose to stick with Info-Tech Systems.
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As Babu describes it, Lee is “very good at identifying people”, giving him plenty of leeway to implement and execute all his ideas, from product, product development, execution and day-to-day operation. “So I got full freedom, which helped us to grow into this stage.”
Babu relished the sense of challenge he found in his work at Info-Tech Systems, making it the ideal place for him to build his career.
“I always like challenges,” Babu says. “When I set a challenge [for myself], I will achieve it in one or two years. I will upgrade my challenge to the next level. This place gives me a good platform and a lot of freedom. I can execute my challenges. Growth is there. I don’t find any reason to leave this company.”
That decision has paid off handsomely for Babu, whose net worth has grown tremendously following Info-Tech Systems’ IPO in July. According to the company’s IPO prospectus, Babu held 41.4% of the company or 106.875 million shares immediately after the offering. Based on the stock’s closing price of $1.01 on April 15, that translates to a stake of nearly $108 million.
Profile raised post-listing
At the time of its listing, Info-Tech Systems made waves for being the first company to list on the SGX Mainboard in nearly two years. Headquartered in Singapore, Info-Tech Systems also has clients in Malaysia, Hong Kong and India. The company says it has over 1 million active users on its HRMS platform and serves more than 27,000 customers. In FY2025, the company’s revenue grew by 29% y-o-y to $56.5 million and it has a total cash balance of $67.3 million as of Dec 31, 2025. Babu says going public has given the company a huge boost, raising its profile with clients.
“We have gotten good exposure, especially in Singapore,” Babu says. “We are getting a better response and better enquiries from customers. In addition to that, our corporate governance and internal compliance have increased a lot, which is really helpful for us in the long term.”
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As part of its IPO, Info-Tech Systems sold 24.856 million shares at 87 cents apiece. This netted it approximately $21.6 million in proceeds. The company’s cornerstone investors include fund managers such as Avanda Investment Management, Lion Global Investors and Amova Asset Management (formerly Nikko Asset Management).
All three fund houses had not yet been appointed to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)’s Equity Market Development Programme (EQDP) at the time. The EQDP is an initiative by the MAS to channel capital into the domestic stock market via private asset managers. So far, $3.95 billion of $6.5 billion has been allocated to nine asset managers. MAS says the next batch of fund managers is expected to be announced in mid-2026.
Since then, the stock has continued to draw positive attention from equity research analysts such as CGS International’s Meghana Kande and Lim Siew Khee (target price: $1.35), OCBC Group Research’s Ada Lim (target price: $1.30), RHB’s Syahril Hanafiah (target price: $1.40) and Tickrs’ Jaimes Chao (target price $1.39).
Along with a livelier market for small and mid-caps, Info-Tech Systems has attracted the interest of some fund managers. According to an SGX filing made on April 28, the company’s executive chairman Lee sold nearly 24.34 million shares at 94.5 cents each to fund managers, including Avanda Investment Management, Ginko-AGT Global Growth Fund, ICH Synergrowth Fund, JPMorgan Asset Management (Singapore) and Lion Global Investors. Following this sale, Lee’s stake in the company has been reduced to 19.23% from 28.66%.
“[Info-Tech Systems’] business model benefits significantly from the recurring nature of its subscription revenue, which grows with its customer base and provides the company with a stable and predictable income stream,” OCBC’s Lim tells The Edge Singapore in an interview.
“The majority of its customers pay upfront for a subscription period. Coupled with low inventory needs, this results in strong cash flow generation and a highly efficient cash conversion cycle.”
With Singapore’s equity markets in a new era, many companies are taking advantage of the positive sentiment to tap investors for more capital. For now, Babu says Info-Tech Systems is not looking to tap on the capital markets again to fund its expansion. Info-Tech Systems’ CFO, Juan Chow Yee, says the IPO proceeds have gone toward expanding the company’s training facilities for its education arm, Info-Tech Academy. Overall, going public has bolstered the company’s visibility.
“Prior to that, nobody would look at the small/medium companies. They all look at the big boys in the industry. Now, we all get an opportunity to explain and tell them about us,” Babu says. He added that the company has held meetings with several investors under the EQDP, but stopped short of naming them.
Info-Tech Academy
Besides the company’s core business of software, what will interest investors is its relatively new training services business. Info-Tech Academy might have only started in 2024, but in just less than two years, it has grown into one of the company’s key revenue drivers. The revenue Info-Tech Systems recorded under its services segment, which includes the Academy, increased threefold to $15 million in FY 2025, a 183% y-o-y increase from $5.3 million.
Currently, the services segment takes up about 26.6% of the company’s total revenue. Most of Info-Tech Systems’ revenue still comes from its subscription segment at 69.2%. The remainder of its revenue comes from its hardware segment at 4.2%.
One factor behind the Academy’s outsized performance last year is the “one-off SkillsFuture credit top-up” worth $500, given by the government to all Singaporeans aged 25 and above in 2020. The expiry date of these top-up credits was Dec 31, 2025, which drove a flurry of course sign-ups by Singaporeans who wanted to take advantage of the top-up before it lapsed.
“I cannot deny that it is true,” Babu says of the expiry date, helping to drive the Academy’s sales. “It helps to increase our Academy’s revenue, but that only happened in the last quarter. For this year, we still have 12 months to catch up.”
To keep the momentum going, Info-Tech Academy will ramp up its focus on corporates, in addition to its current focus on individual learners, Babu says. This shift will be buoyed by the government’s funding support for SMEs operating in Singapore.
Under the SkillsFuture initiative, SME and non-SME employees can receive subsidies of up to 90% and 70% respectively for eligible courses. This is on top of the $10,000 SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit (SFEC), which covers up to 90% of out-of-pocket expenses. The SFEC is set to expire on Nov 30, 2026, and another round of $10,000 in credits will be issued to businesses the following day (Dec 1).
Besides focusing on corporates, Babu says Info-Tech Academy will be unveiling new courses in the coming months. The company obtained approval for four new courses in March. Two will be on AI, while the other two will be on Power BI, a data visualisation tool developed by Microsoft.
Info-Tech Systems’ push into AI training is fortuitous considering how the field has become a core focus for policymakers. On Feb 12, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced in Budget 2026 that Singaporeans who enrol in selected AI courses will receive six months of free access to premium AI tools. This could be a further sweetener for those looking to take up courses such as those offered by Info-Tech Academy. Info-Tech Systems says it has yet to receive the full details of the scheme, including the requirements courses must meet to qualify.
Info-Tech Systems is not the only company offering courses for working professionals. Companies like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Salesforce also offer similar offerings. The competition, however, does not faze Babu, who says Info-Tech Systems’ popularity amongst SMEs makes their certifications much more valuable and relevant to employers.
“Those companies offer a generic, general kind of courses, but what we offer is more hands-on, job-related courses,” Babu says. “When [our customers] go for a job interview, [they can] show the certification and say, ‘Hey, I went for a course and have hands-on training with Info-Tech HR software.’ That makes sense and really helps.”
Diversification matters
On the surface, it may feel strange that a software company’s fastest-growing revenue segment comes not from its software but from its training arm. After all, software is a lot easier to scale given its lower marginal costs. Info-Tech Academy’s courses are eligible for government funding under schemes such as SkillsFuture, which encourages lifelong learning and reskilling among workers.
This means the courses must be conducted in person due to government requirements for compulsory physical attendance. That is not really a limitation for Info-Tech, says Babu, who prefers in-person instruction to virtual courses anyway.
“Physical [instruction] is more effective,” Babu adds. “Online, people can shut the camera down. The focus, the concentration is not there. You can get them to focus [for one to two hours].To get them to focus [for eight hours] is harder.”
Info-Tech Systems does not have a target percentage for growing its service segment, Babu says. Rather, the focus is on diversifying its revenue streams while ensuring that the various business units remain focused on tech.
“The core business is still subscription,” says CFO Juan. “For us, the services have already been complementary to the core business. So it’s good to see that services are also growing.”
“It’s a diversification,” Babu adds. “We do not want to just focus on HRMS. Yes, of course, we started with HR as our core business. We have diversified into accounting software and CRM (customer relationship management). We now diversify into the Academy and into multiple regions.”
OCBC’s Lim shares a similar view, noting that Info-Tech Academy provides a “complementary revenue stream” to the company. For Lim, the Academy provides three key benefits.
Firstly, Info-Tech Systems can use its courses to cross-sell its software products to corporate clients. Secondly, the courses will allow it to build up its long-term brand awareness to its students. Thirdly, those courses can be potentially rolled out to overseas markets beyond Singapore given that AI and digital skills tend to be universal in nature.
AI’s a friend
For most tech companies, AI has been both a boon and a bane. Frontier AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have seen their valuations exceed US$800 billion ($1.016 trillion) each, while software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies like DocuSign, Microsoft and Salesforce tumbled in February amid a sell-off some investors have dubbed the “Sasspocalypse”.
The sudden turn came after Citrini Research, a US-based market research firm, published a report on the risks AI could pose to the business models of Sass companies as well as the downstream impacts on other segments such as payment processing and e-commerce.
One argument is the possibility that AI tools will become so capable that even employees with a non-technical background will be able to create their own applications and tools by vibe coding. Vibe coding is the process of using AI to generate software applications by feeding prompts into a large language model. The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy, a co-founder of OpenAI and Tesla’s former director for AI.
Vibe coding is unlikely to pose a threat to Info-Tech Systems’ business model, says Babu, who notes that while it can be used to develop basic applications, it cannot replace the tools his company has been providing to their clients.
“Vibe coding is good. 50% of it is used for fun, 50% of it is used for simple modelling, like simple reporting, simple charts, simple workflow diagrams, simple CRM and all those things. So yes, vibe coding can help,” Babu adds. “But when it comes to the mission-critical applications, like an HRMS, payroll is completely regulated by local governments.”
For instance, HRMS systems need to capture a company’s overtime and leave policies. On top of that, it has to reflect a country’s maternity and paternity leave policies as well as its tax and pension obligations. “AI cannot do all of those things,” Babu says.
Furthermore, employee data is confidential and needs to be stored securely. These are features that a vibe-coded application lacks. “You cannot just keep a normal database because people can easily hack it. You need to have a highly certified and more secure place to keep it,” Babu adds.
That said, AI has been a friend to Info-Tech Systems, says Babu. Besides being a focus in its training courses, the company has been using AI agents to provide customer support services. This helps reduce staff workload, as basic queries can be addressed by an AI chatbot instead of filing a ticket. Babu says that, beyond making money, the portal’s idea was to pique potential customers’ interest in the company’s products and services.
In fact, AI has long been a focus for Info-Tech Systems; in 2023, the company launched Jobs Lah, an AI-powered job portal. Babu says that beyond making money, the idea behind the portal was to arouse interest in the company’s products and services among potential customers.
“When we launched [the portal], we spent a sizable amount of money to start it up. Now, we have completely reduced [our spending by] close to 95%. It is growing organically,” Babu says, adding that thousands of employees are registering on the portal every month.
Both recruiters and job seekers on Jobs Lah become prospects for Info-Tech. The company’s sales team will reach out to HR managers on the platform to upsell its software products, while the Academy team will promote its courses to job seekers.
Execution is key
There’s no such thing as a good age to become an entrepreneur. While some find themselves helming their own companies at a young age, like college dropouts Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, others, like Babu, make the transition midway through their careers after gaining enough industry experience.
“Timing is important,” Babu says, noting that in his case, he had to learn how to adapt to Singapore’s culture while mastering his job as a software engineer. “I needed to have a very good cultural acceptance because I came from India. When I came to Singapore, I experienced culture shock. Within three months, six months, I was like, ‘I want to go back. I miss my friends. I miss my parents.’ [In addition,] the dotcom bust happened.”
It took Babu some time to settle down in his new home. He recalled that he needed another five to seven years to gain experience as an employee before he could take over the reins of Info-Tech Systems.
“This is a great platform and a good place to grow your ambition and your goals,” Babu says. Spending nearly three decades at Info-Tech Systems meant Babu was around to oversee every product transition the company had to navigate, whether it be from DOS (disk operating system) to Windows to the cloud and now, AI. The experience has left him with a deep appreciation for the importance of execution when it comes to running a successful business.
“Making ideas is not so difficult,” Babu says. “Success depends on how we execute [them]. Our execution must be consistent, perfect and hard-working. That is what I learnt and I’m still following it today.”
