Never before has Basel Area Business & Innovation assisted more companies in their efforts to settle in the region than in 2021. Even the second year of the coronavirus pandemic was not able to curtail the demand for the Basel Area location. The new record number of 39 companies settling in the Basel Area surpasses the previous year’s number of 27 companies by far.
28 of these companies, i.e. more than two-thirds of those that settled here, are from the life sciences sector. Of these, 7 operate in the growing innovative segment of digital health. This shows that the Basel Area is becoming increasingly popular among companies engaged in digital health innovations. At the same time, the region has also become more attractive to companies from the area of industrial transformation. The Basel Area attracted 5 new companies that are engaged in production and process technology. The companies that settled in the cantons of Basel-Landschaft, Basel-Stadt and Jura in 2021 come from 15 countries. The US and France each accounted for 5 of these companies and Great Britain for 3. Nine of the companies come from cantons outside the Basel Area.
The number of startups continues to be remarkably high.
Basel Area Business & Innovation assisted 76 start-ups that were founded in the Basel Area in 2021. While this was 6 fewer than the year before, it was still the second-best result ever achieved. In the case both of newly founded startups and of established companies settling in the region, the outstanding ecosystem of the Basel Area plays a central role. The funding programmes and accelerators run by Basel Area Business & Innovation, namely BaseLaunch (biotech), DayOne (digital health), i4Challenge (industrial transformation) and the broad-based Venture Mentoring, a mentoring for startups service, are also playing a major part in the further development of the ecosystem.
Gratifying developments have also been seen with Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area, whose sites in Allschwil, Basel, Jura and on the Novartis campus are now home to 68 companies and 14 research groups. Because the innovation park on the Novartis campus is full, there will be a relocation to the 12th and 14th floors of a neighbouring building on 1 April with a much larger area and a view over the Basel Area.
