US-based startup Epicore Biosystems, a digital health solutions company developing advanced sweat-sensing wearables to provide real-time personalised hydration insights for performance and safety, has received investment from Pegasus Tech Ventures, a global venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, and Denka Company, a Japan-based multinational technology and materials company.

The new investment is the first of a larger series and will be used to support the scale and distribution of Epicore's wearable solutions within Japan and in the broader Asia market.

Using the new investment from Pegasus and Denka, Epicore will improve access to personalised hydration insights by scaling its Connected Hydration solution across Japan and Asia. Connected Hydration is a breakthrough biosensor and enterprise cloud that measures sweat loss, sodium loss, skin temperature and movement to provide actionable rehydration strategies in real-time.

This strategic investment comes on the heels of recent deployments by Epicore and Denka across several industrial sectors in Japan. Denka trialed the solution with multiple Japanese corporations, including chemical factories, construction, engineering services, oil and gas, warehouses and manufacturing plants, and found that extreme heat conditions across both indoor (factory work) and outdoor (construction and oil gas field work) caused significant sweat losses and a broad range of electrolyte losses. These sweat loss results indicate that heat exposure and dehydration risks are not limited to outdoor field workers. In fact, indoor workers experienced significant alerts/alarms and were at times working nearby radiating heat sources, thus representing even higher risk.

Over the past few years, Epicore has lined up several key partners in the United States and abroad, including notable companies such as Chevron, PepsiCo, Gatorade, 3M, the US Army and more. The company will launch the patented Connected Hydration patch, mobile application and cloud engine for commercial use in early 2024.