A Loughborough startup founder has been named one of Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation award winners.  

Kate Allan, the entrepreneur behind children’s prosthetic limbs startup Exphand, is one of 50 women in the UK to have won the award.

She’ll now receive a £50k grant to help support and scale-up her business.

On Linkedin Kate said she heard about the Innovate UK awards four years ago when she began her business journey and was inspired by the work that was being done by great women across the UK:

“From there I set myself a goal that one day I wanted to be given one of these awards.

“Every year I though about applying but never though I was ready. This year after encouragement from my monitoring officer Ian Spero I put an application in and was delighted when I saw the email come through congratulating me on being successful.

“I still cant quite believe that my goal for ‘one day’ has been achieved today.”

The Women in Innovation Award is the third Kate has received from Innovate UK. In 2021, she received a Young Innovators Award and, last year, a Young Innovators Next Steps Award.

This year Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Awards saw a record 920 applications.

Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, said:

“The Innovate UK Women in Innovation programme is an important part of our many activities to make a real difference to the talent and skills pipeline for UK business innovation by inspiring, involving and investing in greater diversity.

“I warmly congratulate all the Women in Innovation Award winners and look forward to keeping in touch as they progress.”