{"id":7028531,"date":"2026-08-05T12:24:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T12:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/angel-investor\/scale-expo-winners-female-and-underrepresented-founders\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T12:24:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T12:24:28","slug":"scale-expo-winners-female-and-underrepresented-founders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531","title":{"rendered":"Scale Expo Winners: Female and Underrepresented Founders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two standout founders have been crowned winners of the two pitch competitions that AIN judged at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scale-london.com\/\">SCALE EXPO &amp; SUMMIT 2026<\/a>. The event was held at London\u2019s Business Design Centre on 22\u201323 April.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nina van Schaick, founder of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peri-pear.com\/\">PeriPear<\/a>, took the top prize in the Female Founders category. Meanwhile, Dr Sangeethsivan Sivakumar, CEO and founder of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ardhann.co.uk\/\">Ardhann<\/a>, won the Underrepresented Founders competition.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The two live pitch events on the Launchpad Stage were judged by a panel of fundraising experts. The panel included AIN\u2019s Director of Brokerage Xavier Ballester. The competitions were designed to spotlight entrepreneurs who have traditionally faced barriers in accessing early-stage capital.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-peripear-tackling-an-unaddressed-crisis-in-maternal-health\"><strong>PeriPear: Tackling an unaddressed crisis in maternal health<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nina van Schaick was a midwife with over a decade of clinical experience who witnessed firsthand the devastating and largely preventable impact of perineal injuries during childbirth. Significantly, approximately 90% of vaginal births result in perineal tearing. This causes lasting pain and health complications for women.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">PeriPear has developed a wearable thermotherapy device that provides gentle, targeted warmth to the perineum during labour. This device is clinically shown to reduce tearing, pain, and episiotomy rates and save longer term costs for health services. Importantly, it\u2019s a simple, evidence-based innovation addressing a gap that has been overlooked for far too long.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-ardhann-intelligent-materials-for-the-energy-transition\"><strong>Ardhann: Intelligent materials for the energy transition<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dr Sangeethsivan Sivakumar holds a PhD in composites manufacturing. He also conducted postdoctoral research at the Henry Royce Institute. Ardhann is building next-generation composite infrastructure for hydrogen and hydrocarbon energy systems, pipes, pressure vessels, and storage cylinders. These are lighter, stronger, and smarter than their steel equivalents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company\u2019s technology embeds graphene sensors at the fibre level, feeding live structural data into a proprietary AI-powered monitoring platform. The result: infrastructure with a nervous system, capable of giving 48 hours\u2019 advance warning of failure. With Europe planning over 11,000 km of hydrogen pipelines by 2030, Ardhann is positioned at the intersection of deep tech and the global energy transition. Currently, the company is raising a \u00a3500,000 pre-seed round with S\/EIS advanced assurance in place.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-platform-for-diverse-founders\"><strong>A Platform for diverse founders<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Commenting on the winners, Xavier Ballester said: \u201cAIN\u2019s mission has always been to democratise access to capital by opening up more opportunities for a wider pool of entrepreneurs. Opportunities like SCALE are important for building a more inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem and there were two worthy winners with genuinely innovative products that solve real world problems. Underrepresented entrepreneurs, including female founders, bring unique perspectives and solutions, driving meaningful change across industries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both PeriPear and Ardhann exemplify the kind of bold, problem-driven thinking that investors in the AIN network look for. These founders are tackling real-world challenges with scalable, defensible solutions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both winners win a Global Pro access on the AIN site, a 1-on-1 pitch review session with our brokerage team and will be featured on our blog.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Are you looking for an angel investor to help fund your business? Join us at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.angelinvestmentnetwork.co.uk\/network\">Angel Investment Network,<\/a>\u00a0where global investors meet the great businesses of tomorrow.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two standout founders have been crowned winners of the two pitch competitions that AIN judged at SCALE EXPO &amp; SUMMIT 2026. The event was held at London\u2019s Business Design Centre on 22\u201323 April. Nina van Schaick, founder of PeriPear, took the top prize in the Female Founders category. Meanwhile, Dr Sangeethsivan Sivakumar, CEO and founder [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7028532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12034],"tags":[15874,2112,12635,2398,192337,5309],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7028531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angel-investor","tag-expo","tag-female","tag-founders","tag-scale","tag-underrepresented","tag-winners"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Scale Expo Winners: Female and Underrepresented Founders - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scale Expo Winners: Female and Underrepresented Founders - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Two standout founders have been crowned winners of the two pitch competitions that AIN judged at SCALE EXPO &amp; SUMMIT 2026. The event was held at London\u2019s Business Design Centre on 22\u201323 April. Nina van Schaick, founder of PeriPear, took the top prize in the Female Founders category. Meanwhile, Dr Sangeethsivan Sivakumar, CEO and founder [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-05T12:24:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_6224-Edited-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b85e3c3dc0e1daea076524dc8810c371\"},\"headline\":\"Scale Expo Winners: Female and Underrepresented Founders\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-05T12:24:28+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531\"},\"wordCount\":508,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/IMG_6224-Edited-scaled.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Expo\",\"Female\",\"founders\",\"Scale\",\"Underrepresented\",\"Winners\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Angel Investor\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7028531\",\"name\":\"Scale Expo Winners: Female and Underrepresented Founders - 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