UndaTech CEO and co-founder Emily Pyke on defence technology and entrepreneurialism

Okay, so let me just give a little bit of a backstory.

You're ex-Navy in electronic warfare.

You have previously been a founder of a also underwear company, Bare Thrills.

Yes, that's how it all started, Bare Thrills.

Okay.

You're also very recent recipient of the Westpac Female Founder of the Year Award for 2026 and the Prime Minister's Defence Entrepreneur of the Year.

Yes.

So Undertek exists because of my 13 years of service in the Royal Australian Navy.

And I feel very privileged to have a very diverse career where I operated in lots of different types of environments, operational deployments, different types of PPE were worn, a number of operational deployments to the Middle East.

And during that time I identified a gap which disproportionately affects the female workforce and that is most of the protective equipment in which we are issued was never designed around our bodies and our anatomical needs.

So an example of that is body armour and ballistic vests.

Body armour is a plate and that plate is hard because it's designed to take impact of incoming bullets or shrapnel.

And that was not designed to be worn with breasts.

And then at the foundational level in which we exist and starting with that most critical and overlooked and unprotected gap is undergarments.

So women wearing commercial bras, thinking about sports bras that are commercially available.

They were designed around a 45-minute workout or, you know, a high rock session or a run or a yoga session.

And they were not designed to be worn in operational environments for 14-hour patrols with heavy body armour and within these physically demanding.

And they're often made from a highly synthetic sports compressive material.

material, which when you are exposed to a fire or radiant heat or an explosion, these products can melt under the protective layer.

So my career within the ADF, although I was quite lucky to have quite a great career and I'll always be very thankful for that, that is why Undertek exists because we identified a gap which turns out it's across almost all high-risk sectors globally.