For all the talk of Britain’s startup slowdown, the winners of the Santander X Awards 2025 paint a rosier picture.
Held under Santander’s global entrepreneurship platform, the awards recognise early-stage founders, startups and SMEs tackling structural challenges.
This year’s winners span medical devices, women’s health and climate-resilient agriculture, united by a common theme of practical innovation meeting real-world constraints.
Santander positions itself as well as a financier to winners, but also as a long-term partner as they scale, offering training, community, exposure, and financial tools at every stage of development. For the winners, the value lies as much in credibility and networks as it does in prize money.
And in an economy where access to capital, regulation and trust can be the difference between impact and irrelevance, this backing matters.
Amparo World
Amparo World, winner in the SME category, is tackling a problem most people in developed markets rarely encounter.
While prosthetic technology itself has advanced incrementally in the past few years, the process of fitting and delivering prosthetics remains slow, centralised and expensive, effectively excluding m amputees worldwide.
“Access to prosthetic care was very limited,” says Frederico Carpinteiro, co-founder of Amparo. “Most lower-limb amputees don’t have access because prosthetic fitting still relies on trial-and-error, multiple clinic visits, and specialist centres that are usually located in cities.”
For people with limited mobility, often living far from urban healthcare hubs, that system simply doesn’t work.
Amparo’s solution is a direct-fitted prosthetic socket that can be delivered and fitted anywhere in under two hours, removing the need for repeated clinic visits. It’s therefore a fundamental rethink of a process that hasn’t changed in decades.
But scaling hardware in healthcare is rarely a straightforward feat.
“The hardest part has been funding fast growth,” Carpinteiro added. “Hardware products require upfront cash to build stock, and that creates serious cashflow pressure.”
Despite this, Amparo is already working in more than 45 countries and has recently become an NHS-approved supplier, a milestone many health-tech startups never achieve.
Santander X’s support, Carpinteiro says, is about achieving this awareness. “It will help bring awareness to Amparo and expand our network so we can get to more people faster.”
We Are Boost
If Amparo is about access, We Are Boost is about listening to the needs above general healthcare. Founded by Samantha Jackman, Boost emerged after her mother struggled with a traditional silicone breast prosthesis following a mastectomy. It was heavy and uncomfortable, and in her words, emotionally draining.
“At first, we didn’t know if this was just my mum’s experience,” Jackman says. “So we didn’t rush to fix a product. We went out and listened.”
And what they were told was consistent. Women often felt ignored by an industry that hadn’t meaningfully evolved in decades. This was apparent in their limited colour options, little thought for comfort or sustainability, and designs that reinforced loss rather than recovery.
“The core problem wasn’t just the product,” Jackman added. “It was that women hadn’t been properly listened to.”
Boost’s lightweight products have been designed to feel less intrusive, both physically and psychologically, and are already available across Wales and parts of the UK. But women’s health innovation still meets scepticism in funding rooms.
“Women’s health is often viewed as niche. Many decision-makers don’t have lived experience of these issues, so the scale and urgency are underestimated.”
Recognition like the Santander X Award helps shift that perception for the sector. “It gives us credibility. It shows our business is robust, our product works, and there is real demand.”
Muju Earth
Climate innovation often targets emissions after the damage is done. But Muju Earth, the founder winner in the university category, is starting underground.
“So much climate tech treats symptoms,” says Hu Wangyang, part of the founding team. “But soil health sits at the root of food security, biodiversity and carbon storage”.
Modern agriculture has compressed and weakened soil often through heavy machinery and heavy chemicals, reducing oxygen and biological activity. The results have led to poorer yields, waterlogging and fragility in extreme weather.
Muju Earth’s answer is what it calls the Aeropod, a biodegradable capsule planted like a seed. It is triggered by soil conditions, aerates compacted ground, releases nutrients, and breaks down naturally.
“Farmers are dealing with compaction and unpredictable weather every year,” Wangyang added. “There aren’t many affordable tools that fit into existing farming practices.”
Santander X funding will help Muju Earth bridge the gap between prototype and production by replacing materials with soil-safe alternatives, running greenhouse tests, and preparing for larger field trials.
Longer term, their ambition is to expand globally. “We want soil regeneration to be practical and accessible anywhere. If we get this right, we help protect food systems and reduce dependence on heavy machinery worldwide.”
A different picture of UK innovation
Taken together, the Santander X Award winners paint a positive picture of university–born British entrepreneurship
These startups are businesses dealing with regulation, manufacturing and adoption, often difficult feats in the market, with various solutions designed to fix real issues across the country.
In a year when scaling has become harder and capital more selective, Santander X’s focus on their long-term support. And for the founders walking away with this year’s awards will give them the impetus to carry on and expand.