Young entrepreneurs win £15,000 for re-usable period pants that cost just £4

A trio of young pistillate entrepreneurs, each aged 22, person been recognised with a prestigious concern grant for their efforts to combat play poorness by creating affordable underwear.

Sarah Bailey, Aurusha Kharas and Anushka Mahesh are the brains down The Even Project, a institution that has developed reusable play pants costing conscionable £4, a important simplification from the emblematic terms tag of £27.

Although their merchandise won't deed the marketplace until March 2025, they've already secured 44,000 pre-orders from NGOs, exile camps, and humanitarian organisations.

Their innovative attack has earned them a £15,000 prize arsenic 1 of the winners of the Santander X UK Awards 2024.

Sarah commented: "We are precise overmuch accidental entrepreneurs. Even erstwhile we started moving together, we ne'er expected it to rotation retired into a business."

The company, established successful 2022, initially aimed to transportation businesses to little the outgo of play products done grassroots advocacy. However, aft making small progress, plan technologist Sarah, mechanical technologist Anushka and neuroscientist Aurusha decided to instrumentality matters into their ain hands and make their ain product.

Their debased manufacturing costs and simple, one-size-fits-all, single-colour plan alteration them to support prices down.

Period pants, fundamentally undergarments with other worldly layers, tin sorb up to 50ml of liquids, functioning likewise to regular underwear. They necessitate nary peculiar attraction arsenic they are washable either by manus oregon successful a instrumentality and are designed to consciousness conscionable similar regular underwear.

Sarah highlighted the information that large, established companies person overlooked the further 65% of radical worldwide who menstruate, contempt having had accepted products connected the marketplace for galore decades.

“I deliberation a monolithic injustice is that we've got these ample commercialized companies that are private-equity owned that person been astir for ages, these multi-billion dollar companies.

In the wider strategy of things of their full addressable market, they haven't deed implicit 35 per cent of the full worldwide menstrual colonisation yet accepted products person been astir for 100 years now" she says.

Their inaugural is not lone poised to assistance women wrong humanitarian settings, but besides aims to tackle play inequality facing individuals successful the UK.

Santander has been nurturing UK entrepreneurial endowment done its yearly contention for 14 years, delivering implicit £1 cardinal successful equity-free enactment to a multitude of start-ups and tiny businesses crossed the nation.

Football fable Gary Neville, portion of the awards' judging cohort alongside Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, expressed his enthusiasm, saying: "It's been breathtaking to enactment with Santander UK judging their Santander X 2024 Awards."

"I've had the accidental to ticker immoderate unthinkable entrepreneurs transportation their ideas [...] They show conscionable however galore fantastic start-ups and ambitious entrepreneurs determination are successful the UK, and it's been a privilege to perceive their stories and spot the passionateness for their ideas."

Mike Regnier, Santander UK CEO added: "The X Awards are conscionable 1 mode we're helping the country's astir breathtaking caller entrepreneurs done captious funding, skill-building, and fostering connections on the way."

"A immense congratulations to this year's six winners".