The 2025 edition of our DayOne Accelerator program culminated on 10-11 December at our sold-out Innovation Showcase event, held in Roche Building 1 in Basel. Over 300 startup founders, pharma industry leaders, investors and regional ecosystem stakeholders came together to watch two pitching competitions, learn from expert plenary presentations and panel discussions, and to network.
After completing their 3-month program involving expert mentorship, webinars, hands-on “pitch to pharma” practice sessions, networking events, and more, 10 of this year’s cohort of 14 healthtech and techbio startups pitched on stage during the event.
Nives Rombini, CEO & Co-founder, Navis Bio; Anna Cichońska, COO & Co-founder, Harmonic Discovery; Cécile Tardy-Srinivasan, Portfolio & Acceleration Lead, DayOne; Angela Holmes, CEO, OmniScience
A jury of investors and industry experts in digital health and pharma chose Harmonic Discovery as the competition winner, who got rewarded with a cash prize of CHF 16,200 representing the total ticket sales for the event. Navis Bio and OmniScience deservedly took the runner-up spots and were awarded startup packages for health.tech global summit (valued at CHF 3,500 each). The jury included representatives from Debiopharm, Redalpine, Kurma Partners, Vi Partners, Cathay Innovation, Asabys, Kadmos Capital, CSL Behring, Novartis, Novo Nordisk and Roche.
Feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive, and the event also received some media coverage – notably in an article published in the Basler Zeitung (German).
Thank you to Roche for hosting the event, and to Canton Basel-Stadt and our event partners for helping make this event happen!
DayOne already looking ahead to a packed 2026
Before the dust has finished settling from the Showcase, the DayOne team is already preparing for key activities in the coming year.
First up is the selection of those accelerator cohort members who will move to our long-term support program, DayOne Next, where they will receive a CHF 50k non-dilutive grant, 12 months of high-touch mentoring and in-kind services, plus office and lab space, and investment opportunities from our partners.
Second is the startup pitching competition that DayOne will be running at the health.tech global summit, taking place in Basel on 3-5 March. 15 startup founders will have the chance to pitch directly to investors on the main conference stage.
And of course, at the end of March we will be opening the Call for Applications for the 2026 edition of the DayOne Accelerator. Watch this space for details!
