Young female entrepreneurs win award for tackling period poverty with £4 underwear

Sarah Bailey, Aurusha Kharas and Anushka Mahesh, all aged 22, hope their period pants will help improve menstrual hygiene across the developing world.

Their company, The Even Project, has developed re-usable underwear for just a fraction of the current typical cost of £27.

The product does not launch until March 2025 but they already have 44,000 pre-orders from NGOs, refugee camps, and humanitarian organisations.

Now they have scooped £15,000 as one of the winners of the Santander X UK Awards 2024.

Sarah said: "We are very much accidental entrepreneurs. Even when we started working together, we never expected it to spin out into a business. None of us ever dreamed of being entrepreneurs - I didn't even think it was possible.

“My advice to any young girls thinking of starting something like this would be, don’t lose your humility – maybe your way isn’t ‘the’ way, and that’s OK. Be tenacious with your future vision, but the strategy is written in pencil, and the mission is written in stone."

The trio first began talking about the topic of menstrual poverty as 16-year-old students in the UAE, before all moving to the UK to go to Queen Mary University of London and the University of Bristol.

They formed a company in 2022 and initially focused on a grassroots advocacy approach to encourage businesses to make period products cheaper.

But after growing discouraged at the lack of headway, design engineer Sarah, mechanical engineer Anushka and neuroscientist Aurusha decided to simply make their own.

The product will be vital to people struggling with period inequality in the UK

Sarah said: “I think a massive injustice is that we've got these large commercial companies that are private-equity owned that have been around for ages, these multi-billion dollar companies.

“In the wider scheme of things of their total addressable market, they haven't hit over 35 per cent of the entire worldwide menstrual population yet conventional products have been around for 100 years now.”

They worked for 18 months to design the product, measuring the stress cycles, looking for points of failure, examining material properties, and running simulations on CAD software.

Period pants are used exactly as regular underwear but have extra layers of material that capture and store up to 50ml of liquids.

The underwear can be washed by hand or in a machine and the construction means they feel no different to regular pants.

The Even Project is able to undercut the current market thanks to three core strategies.

Firstly, they have redesigned the way period underwear is manufactured to reduce the cost by 60–70 per cent.

The product is also one size fits all and one-colour, which simplifies the process to keep costs down.

And finally, as an ’impact-first social enterprise’, the Even Project works on a much lower profit margin than a for-profit brand.

Sarah says one of the key reasons for the success of The Even Project is knowing she has the full support and backing of people who are not just co-founders, but friends.

And while conventional wisdom suggests mixing business and personal relationships doesn’t always work out, when it comes to doing good, it can be worth the risk.

Sarah added: “I would say – do it with your friends. It’s not the most common advice, and things can go wrong, but I would not be doing this without Anushka and Arusha.

“They are truly some of the most amazing people I've ever met, and I pinch myself every day that I get to work with them full time.”

Taking businesses to the next level

Their initial plan is to help women in the humanitarian sector, but they also believe their product will be just as vital to people struggling with period inequality in the UK.

Santander has been running its annual entrepreneurship competition for 14 years and in this time has provided more than £1 million in equity-free funding to thousands of UK start-ups and small businesses.

Another winner on the night was 30-year-old Tom Scrope, whose firm is set to revolutionise the UK farming industry.

Soil Benchmark, based in North Yorkshire, took home a £25,000 equity-free prize for its product, which uses AI data to help farmers look after their soil more sustainably.

Tom said: “A lot of modern agricultural techniques have meant soil has been losing its fertility, so farmers are having to spend more on chemicals and rivers are getting polluted.

About 40 per cent of agricultural pollution comes from soil now and farmland, and they're actually releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

“We set up the business to try and turn that around and to help farmers because healthier soil leads to bigger and more profitable crops. Since agronomy started, farmers would use someone to physically map out farmland with pen and paper, every bit of every field.

“It’s something Cheerful Charlie would probably do on Clarkson’s Farm, and it would take weeks or months to do.

“But now, we’ve built the first system that automates that, in a way that’s more accurate than by hand, and takes two minutes instead of a day.”

Gary Neville, who was on the judging panel alongside Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill and Santander UK CEO, Mike Regnier, said: “I set up my investment business ‘Relentless’ in 2015, and since then have been supporting innovative, inspiring businesses from launch through to scale. It’s been exciting to work with Santander UK judging their Santander X 2024 Awards.

“I’ve had the chance to watch some incredible entrepreneurs pitch their ideas and compete for funding to help them take their businesses to the next level.

“They demonstrate just how many fantastic start-ups and ambitious entrepreneurs there are in the UK, and it’s been a privilege to hear their stories and see the passion for their ideas.

"I look forward to following their progress – they all have a bright future ahead of them.”

Mike Regnier added: “The X Awards are just one way we’re helping the country’s most exciting new entrepreneurs through vital funding, skill-building, and fostering connections along the way.

“A huge congratulations to this year’s six winners – I look forward to watching your businesses grow.”