Basingstoke: SETsquared launches new hi-tech business hub

SETsquared launches its brand new business hub for hi-tech start-ups in Basingstoke today (December 4).

The incubation hub, which is located in the Basing View Innovation Centre, will see SETsquared bring its award-winning service to the town after receiving £100,000 of support from Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council.

The hub is expected to bring £20 million of investment to Basingstoke as well as support 20 new high-growth companies over the next few years.

The new hub will launch with an event featuring a keynote speech from Will Franks, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Ubiquisys, the world-leading ‘small cell’ telecoms company. The business was started in SETsquared and sold to Cisco for $310 million in the UK’s biggest ‘exit’ of 2013.

The SETsquared partnership, which brings together the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey, has been named the best business incubator in Europe and second best in the world, and has attracted over a billion pounds in investment.

SETsquared’s innovation director Simon Bond said: “We’re really excited to open our new business hub in Basingstoke and bring our services, which are the best in Europe, to the area. We can see a lot of potential in Basingstoke and the fact that it’s been earmarked as a growth area is fantastic. There’s a lot of opportunity for businesses to grow here, and this is just one element of that.”

SETsquared currently supports over 300 high-tech, high-growth potential start-ups. Around 15% of those companies are spin-outs from the universities and the rest are businesses from the surrounding areas.

Leader of Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council cllr Clive Sanders said: “To make sure we have a good supply of new jobs for our growing population, we need to create the right conditions for businesses to set up and prosper here. SETsquared is a world leader in bringing entrepreneurs with good ideas together with those who can invest and support them to grow into successful companies. Our area has already been recognised as one of the best places in the country to develop a hi-tech company, so Basingstoke makes a perfect location for SETsquared’s first non-university based incubation hub.”