It is a sponsored story, created and edited completely by Tokyo Metropolitan Authorities’s Tokyo Updates web site.
As considerations over local weather change and rising temperatures develop, discovering sensible options for maintaining individuals secure and comfy is turning into a serious problem for cities all over the world. United States-based startup Eztia Supplies has developed HydraVolt, a next-generation cooling materials aimed toward individuals working in excessive warmth sectors, akin to building, logistics, and protection. Eztia CEO Tiffany Yeh discusses the story behind this innovation and its potential throughout a variety of functions.
How innovation materialized
Yeh was among the many contributors at SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026, Asia’s largest world innovation convention held at Tokyo Huge Sight from April 27-29, the place she was chosen as a finalist for the SusHi Tech Problem 2026 pitch contest.
HydraVolt is printed on or sewn into clothes and is designed to decrease pores and skin temperature by means of evaporative cooling by as much as 10 levels Celsius, for so long as 8 hours. Requiring neither electrical energy nor batteries, the fabric is recharged by means of publicity to water and may be laundered like common clothes. The roots of this modern know-how return to Yeh’s pupil days, when she started exploring wearable cooling supplies as a ardour venture.
Yeh was born and raised in Taiwan however has been primarily based within the USA because the age of 17. After majoring in supplies science on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise, she went on to earn a medical diploma from the College of Pennsylvania. The completed scholar additionally frolicked abroad for fieldwork in Asia, Africa and Latin America — among the world’s hottest places.
Her experiences overseas sparked Yeh’s curiosity in investigating the cooling polymers used to control temperatures in buildings and vaccine packaging. Her analysis impressed the polymer designs she developed as a aspect venture whereas finding out medication.
Eztia develops superior cooling supplies that take in and dissipate physique warmth with out electrical energy.
| Yoko Akiyoshi
“After medical college, I needed to take these designs and switch them into an precise know-how, and that’s what led to Eztia,” she explains. “I by no means anticipated to return to supplies science after my medical diploma, however now my work has turn out to be a mixture of each fields.”
Yeh feels lucky to have had a variety of alternatives that resulted in her exploration of cooling options. “In the event you care deeply about one thing, then it’s best to pursue it since you’re nicely geared up to take action,” she says. “I believe it was exactly all of these totally different paths and experiences that put me in a superb place to sort out this explicit space of supplies science.”
Constructing early momentum in Tokyo
With what Yeh phrases “employee security” as its core market, Eztia goals to supply cooling options by means of numerous approaches. “I believe employee security is essential as a result of it touches a number of layers of society,” she factors out. “So, the broader imaginative and prescient is that we are able to finally adapt this know-how in numerous methods to serve a variety of wants throughout society.”
Japan — and Tokyo particularly — has particular significance within the Eztia story. The corporate’s first accomplice was Kajima Company, which utilized the cooling materials at a building web site in Tokyo. Kajima already had a robust grasp of warmth aid measures, and the development agency performed a key position in serving to refine HydraVolt designs over time.
“We went from a cooling patch, to a shirt with cooling pockets, to now immediately printing our cooling materials onto clothes,” says Yeh. She appreciates the trouble Kajima put into compiling studies and sharing knowledge along with her staff, which she says is indicative of the excessive stage of care and consideration proven by Japanese companions typically.
Eztia additionally works with prospects within the USA and Singapore, together with an American building agency and the Singaporean authorities, which is utilizing HydraVolt for police and corrections officers. On this means, this sustainable cooling know-how is now being utilized throughout each the business and public security sectors.
Expertise with social influence
One in all Eztia’s traders is Scrum Ventures, a enterprise capital fund with bases in each the USA and Japan. It has helped Yeh’s firm to conduct trials with quite a lot of demographics by means of an accelerator program in Hokkaido.
Yeh explains how Eztia’s know-how has the potential to be tailored to serve a variety of wants.
| Yoko Akiyoshi
These actions included profitable take a look at outcomes with cooling headwear for elementary college youngsters, shirts and headbands with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters skilled baseball staff, and arm covers for drivers at Yamato Holdings Co., Ltd., a logistics and parcel supply firm. The outcomes recommend robust potential for the know-how to be scaled and integrated into every day life.
Amid rising considerations over world warming and growing temperatures, HydraVolt’s know-how might contribute to bettering resilience in cities akin to Tokyo by providing new options for dealing with heatstroke. It might show to be a recreation changer for public security, supporting first responders akin to healthcare employees within the discipline or employees managing outside occasions.
Eztia is having a constructive influence in different methods, too. Yeh is happy with how the agency’s manufacturing base in Taiwan proactively employs ladies, worldwide college students and individuals who entered the workforce by means of commerce faculties slightly than universities.
“I believe it’s all about providing alternatives to individuals from totally different backgrounds who might have traditionally been neglected, however who’re gifted and work very onerous,” she notes. “It’s about giving them the chance to develop and to shine.”
A blueprint for world growth
Yeh’s first expertise at SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 has been extremely rewarding. “We don’t conduct conventional outbound advertising and marketing, however slightly join with collaborators and purchasers by phrase of mouth, so having a platform like SusHi Tech Tokyo to assist develop our community has been very beneficial,” she says.
Yeh (left) on stage with the opposite finalists within the SusHi Tech Problem 2026 at Huge Sight Tokyo.
| COURTESY OF THE TOKYO METROPOLITAN GOVERNMENT
Along with being chosen as a finalist for the SusHi Tech Problem 2026, Yeh additionally participated as a speaker, with a session entitled “Remodeling Areas into Innovation Platforms: From Demonstration Fields to Co-Creation Ecosystems.” Drawing on a land and increase technique, she says that Eztia first proves the worth of its merchandise with an preliminary accomplice, who then gives detailed suggestions so the know-how may be improved in a collaborative means.
“If that’s carried out nicely, the community results are available in as a result of others will hear about it and this produces a sure virality, the place different individuals within the area then bounce on board,” Yeh explains. “So, I believe that’s the place co-creation and successful a area go hand in hand.” Such initiatives can then function case research or success tales that may be shared with different areas.
Trying forward, Yeh describes the corporate’s strategy as “two-pronged“: increasing partnerships to display the broadly relevant nature of the know-how, whereas additionally deepening collaboration inside every group to scale implementation throughout a number of websites.
As coping with excessive temperatures turns into an more and more pressing world subject, Eztia’s momentum seems to be heating up at simply the appropriate time.
