Young Harrogate entrepreneur Hannah to share in £1.25m prize fund for business idea which may change the world

Announced by Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation agency, 27-year-old Hannah Lee is one of five winners from Yorkshire and the Humber in this year’s Young Innovator Award winners.

Hannah, who studied sociology at university, won the coveted prize after creating Truly, an education tool built for young people offering the best ways to understand and interpret information from news and media articles.

Thanks to proprietary chatbot services, Truly means news articles can be summarised in engaging formats with the ability to evaluate and assess a range of different articles – and flag up one-sided reporting.

After winning a £5,000 grant, Hannah said she was grateful to received one-on-one business coaching and an allowance to cover living costs – and she hoped her idea would change the way that people approached, understood and consumed media.

“The mentoring will be extremely important,” she said.

"I will benefit from advice and guidance in areas like growing and managing a team, best practices for tracking the project and useful strategies to reach out and engage the media.”.

Hannah joins a total of 94 young people aged 18 to 30 who have been recognised by Innovate UK for coming up with business ideas that could change the world.

This year’s competition received almost 700 applicants this year, up 25% on the previous year.

The exceptional standard of ideas led Innovate UK to award over 50% more winners this year, making this the largest number of Young Innovators to-date.

With a clear drive to support underrepresented innovation talent, this year, 46% of the winners are female, 39% are Black, Asian or from another ethnic minority group, and 11% have identified as disabled.

Science, Research and Innovation Minister George Freeman said: "Helping, inspiring and supporting our top Young Innovators is the best investment there is.

"The next James Dyson, Martha Lane Fox, Hayaatun Sillem or Richard Branson are out there."

To find out more about Innovate UK, visit www.ktn-uk.org/programme/young-innovators