A Sunderland entrepreneur has been recognised by Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Awards for work which is aiming to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges.
Vijayalakshmi Subramani is amongst 38 women across the UK who will be awarded £50,000 as well as mentoring and coaching to help to bringing new, disruptive products and services to market.
The women who feature on the list of winners – published on International Women’s Day in response to this year’s theme to ‘break the bias’ – have created new enterprises in response to challenges emerging from them pandemic, climate crisis, while also harnessing emerging technologies for education.
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Mrs Subramani was inspired by her six-year-old autistic son to co-found TeenyWeenyVR, a VR-based edutainment platform for Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), to help them prepare to visit new places.
She said: “I was inspired by my own personal experience using VR with my six-year-old autistic son.
“His VR headset not only calms him down during episodes of anxiety but I also found it helped in preparing him to visit new places if he could see and feel it in immersive experience first, which would lead to increassed collective family happiness when we visit the same places for real. I am honoured and privileged to have won the Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation Award.”
The flagship Women in Innovation Awards forms a key part of Innovate UK’s commitment to boosting the number of UK female entrepreneurs. As highlighted in the recent Rose Review, if women were to start and scale businesses at the same rate as men, it could add up to £250bn to the UK economy.
Now in its fourth year, Innovate UK’s Women in Innovation programme continues to support high-potential female business leaders from diverse backgrounds.
This year, over a third of the winners are black, Asian or from another ethnic minority group, 16% have identified as disabled, and there are award winners in every nation and region of the UK.
Indro Mukerjee, CEO of Innovate UK, said: “We have an incredible opportunity to make a real difference to the talent and skills pipeline for UK business innovation by inspiring, involving and investing in greater diversity. With practical actions like our Women in Innovation programme, we can help make a real difference to developing the successful innovators and businesses of the future.”
Emily Nott, head of equality, diversity and inclusion at Innovate UK said: “It has continued to be a challenging year of uncertainty but these pioneering, resilient women inspire us to dream big and make an impact despite the difficulties we face.
“Innovate UK will work alongside these winners to ensure they have the resources and support required to turn their innovative ideas and aspirations into a reality, while encouraging a new generation of women to come forward and pursue their ambitions.”
