Dr Beenish Siddique, founder of AEH Innovative Hydrogel, won funding from the University of Manchester's Eli and Britt Harari Graphene Enterprise competition
Start-ups create local jobs and opportunities and attract investment, powering growth in the UK’s key sectors and solving health challenges.
Start-ups also develop new products and services which can solve societal and business problems.
They have the potential to form new clusters in local areas, boost local economic growth and contribute to the eight growth sectors identified in the government’s industrial strategy.
In numbers
For all figures, data shows student and staff start-ups, as represented in HE-BCI, excluding spin-outs.
38
k
student and staff start-up companies have emerged with the support of universities since 2014–15.
70
%
increase in active firms from 2014–15 to 2022–23.
702
%
growth in the turnover of start-ups supported by universities in the last nine years.
- More than 38,000 start-ups have emerged with the support of universities since 2014–15.
- On average, more than 4,300 firms are registered each year.
- There’s been a 70% increase in active firms from 2014–15 to 2022–23.
- In the academic year 2022–23, more than 64,000 people were employed by start-ups that had emerged from universities. This has grown by nearly 177% in the last nine years.
- The turnover of start-ups supported by universities has grown by 702% and external investment into student start-ups has increased by over 346% across the sector in the last nine years.
Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), Intellectual property, start-ups and spin-offs
Impact on each region of the UK
This data shows how many university-affiliated start-ups were active in 2022-23, mapped against the region of the university in which they were founded.
Because graduates and staff don’t stay in one area, and start-up companies may move as they seek investment, it’s difficult to attribute turnover to direct economic impact in each region. However, start-ups, even at their earliest stages, contribute to regional economic growth through local employment.
Increasingly, universities are working to keep start-ups in the region they were founded, to ensure the start-ups have impact on the local economy.
They do this by:
- improving access to investment
- offering business advice to support company growth
- strengthening the ties between founders and the local business community
Case studies: societal impact
Start-ups supported by universities can help solve the world’s biggest problems, from climate change to healthcare.
Take a look at our case studies featuring the most impactful university start-ups across the UK: