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The University Business Incubator (UBI) Index recoreded that SETsquared has “given birth” to 1,000 high-tech start-ups since its inception 10 years ago, raising £34m in investment in 2013 for the companies within its incubator. This year also saw the sale of one of its alumni businesses, the Swindon-based Ubiquisys, to US giant Cisco for $310m.
SETsquared is a partnership of the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey, has given birth to some 1,000 high-tech start-ups since its inception 10 years ago.
“We knew the Innovation Centre in Exeter was helping to drive an innovation culture throughout the City but it’s great to have this endorsement that we are amongst the best in the world,” said Sean Fielding, Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University of Exeter (pictured). “The Centre is also helping the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.”
“We have already had some great successes including Mod My Pi, a SETsquared Graduate Business of the Year, who have achieved an astonishing £1M turnover in its first year and student entrepreneurs have just won the Microsoft global app challenge in St Petersburg and are now in Atlanta presenting to Microsoft engineers. These knowledge based businesses are the key to the UK’s future growth and competitiveness in the world markets and universities have a huge role to play in providing the right tools to enable them to get off to a flying start.”
Graham Harrison, SETsquared Partnership Director, said: “These successes, combined with the UBI Index ranking, are proof that our model works. We have been supporting the UK’s economic growth by championing these innovative start-ups for the last 10 years and, without question, we see the UK’s economy over the next decade being underpinned by the kind of high-tech, start-up businesses being nurtured in our centres.”
Other successful examples from the SETsquared incubator, highlighted by Exeter, include Crowdcube, which it describes as the world’s first equity-based crowdfunding platform, and PrimerDesign, which produced the world’s first swine-flu detection kit.
