What if cooling the person mattered more than cooling the room? Chiltier is challenging conventional cooling with its concept of personal thermal architecture. Founder and inventor Kulpreet Sahni speaks to EFY’s Akanksha Sondhi Gaur about the technology, strategy, and vision behind the innovation.
Q. Can you walk us through your background and what led to the inception of Chiltier?
A. Our journey into Chiltier did not begin with the idea of building another cooling solution; it began with frustration. Coming from engineering and deep-tech backgrounds, we had worked extensively across electronics, thermal systems, and product development. Across industries, we saw cooling being treated as an afterthought rather than a core system. Whether in electronics, electric vehicle platforms, or industrial applications, cooling systems were typically designed for peak load and operated most of the time inefficiently. That inefficiency became impossible to ignore. Chiltier was born from the belief that cooling should be an active system that adapts in real time rather than a passive support function. So, we are reinventing cooling as an intelligent, adaptive system.
Q. What core problem are you solving, and why is it significant today?
A. Cooling is one of the largest hidden energy drains globally. From data centres and electric vehicles (EVs) to industrial machinery, inefficient thermal management affects performance, cost, and sustainability. The fundamental issue is that traditional systems are designed for worst-case scenarios and offer limited adaptability. As systems become more compact and power-dense, this approach becomes increasingly inefficient. Our solution dynamically matches cooling demand, reducing energy consumption while improving performance and system longevity.
Q. What is the core technology behind your solution, and how does it differ from existing systems?
A. Our system is built on an intelligent cooling architecture that integrates sensing, control, and thermal design. Unlike conventional systems that operate on fixed curves or simple feedback loops, it continuously monitors thermal behaviour and adjusts cooling output accordingly. The focus is not merely on sensing but on optimising heat transfer, cooling prioritisation, and energy utilisation at a system level, resulting in greater precision and efficiency.
Q. Your system is built on thermoelectric cooling, which is traditionally considered inefficient. What fundamental innovation made it viable?
A. Thermoelectric cooling using the Peltier effect has historically been constrained by poor efficiency and high power consumption. Rather than reinventing the effect itself, we engineered the ecosystem around it. We created a controlled microclimate inside the thermopod to keep Peltier modules within their optimal operating range, decoupled the hot and cold sides, and developed a proprietary heat-evacuation system combining passive and active cooling. This enables a temperature differential of approximately 35°C even at an ambient temperature of 48 °C. We did not change the physics; we optimised the conditions in which it operates.
Q. Can you explain the architecture of your system and how it operates in real-world conditions?
A. Our architecture combines distributed sensing, control electronics, and optimised cooling hardware within a unified platform. It continuously monitors temperature gradients, load variations, and environmental conditions, using this data to allocate cooling dynamically. Rather than cooling an entire system uniformly, it targets hotspots with precision, improving stability while reducing energy use.
Q. The idea of ‘cooling the person, not the space’ is central to your innovation. How does your system enable this?
A. Traditional systems such as air conditioners (ACs) cool entire spaces, which is inherently inefficient. Our approach delivers cooling directly to the body. The thermopod chills a fluid that circulates through conductive tubing embedded in wearables such as jackets, mattresses, and blankets. By extracting 60–140 watts of heat directly from the body, we maintain comfort without cooling the surrounding environment, enabling localised, demand-based cooling.
Q. Your tubing system is often highlighted as a key differentiator. What makes it unique?
A. It is one of our strongest intellectual property (IP) assets. The tubing achieves through-plane thermal conductivity exceeding 5 W/m·K, significantly higher than typical wearable materials. Developed with polymer scientists, the custom conductive composite delivers efficient heat extraction while maintaining flexibility and durability. This effectively acts as a thermal amplifier, reducing the load on the cooling system.
Q. Heat rejection is a major bottleneck in thermoelectric systems. How did you solve it?
A. We developed a hybrid heat-evacuation system that combines passive and active dissipation. Instead of relying on bulky heat sinks, our multi-layer architecture rapidly removes heat and isolates it from the cooling loop. Efficient management of the hot side directly improves cold-side performance, which is essential for a compact wearable system.
Q. How did human physiology influence your engineering design?
A. We worked closely with medical experts to understand thermoregulation, particularly vasodilation and vasoconstriction. The body can only tolerate heat extraction up to approximately 3.5 W/m·K before vasoconstriction reduces cooling effectiveness. Our system therefore operates within this physiological threshold, ensuring that cooling works with the body rather than against it.
Q. What role does artificial intelligence (AI) or data-driven intelligence play in your roadmap?
A. Data is central to our approach. Today, intelligent control algorithms optimise performance in real time. The next step is predictive cooling, where artificial intelligence anticipates thermal events before they occur, shifting cooling from a reactive to a predictive model.
Q. What role does intelligent control and power management play in your system?
A. It is critical. Although peak power is 132W, adaptive control reduces steady-state operation to 70-80W. The system continuously adjusts performance based on ambient, body, and water temperatures, as well as thermal load. Selective cycling of Peltier modules ensures energy is used only when necessary, supporting portability and efficiency.
Q. You mentioned custom Peltier substrates. How do they contribute to your advantage?
A. Standard Peltier modules use ceramic substrates that limit performance. Our custom substrates improve thermal transfer efficiency, reduce resistance, and enhance durability under cyclic loads. Together with our tubing and heat-management systems, they create a significant barrier to replication.
Q. What is the hardest-to-replicate part of your system?
A. You see, the challenge lies in integrating three proprietary elements: a custom thermoelectric architecture, a high-conductivity fluid distribution system, and an advanced heat-evacuation mechanism. While each can be replicated individually to some degree, combining them into a compact, efficient wearable platform is considerably more difficult. This integrated personal thermal architecture is our key differentiator.
Q. What were the biggest engineering challenges you faced?
A. The greatest challenge was achieving real-time responsiveness without adding cost or complexity. Integrating sensing, control, and thermal hardware into a compact, scalable platform while maintaining reliability across diverse environments required balancing performance, cost, and scalability simultaneously.
Q. How do you ensure efficiency, reliability, and scalability?
A. Efficiency comes from precise, targeted cooling. Reliability comes from designing for real-world variability and extensive validation. Scalability is enabled through a modular architecture that can be deployed across applications without significant redesign.
Q. How does your solution compare with traditional systems in performance and cost?
A. Traditional systems typically overcool to ensure safety, which reduces efficiency. Our system matches cooling output to actual thermal demand, improving stability while reducing energy consumption. Although upfront costs may be similar, lower energy and maintenance requirements result in a significantly better total cost of ownership.
Q. What industries are you targeting and why?
A. We are focused on sectors where thermal management is mission-critical, including electronics, EVs, industrial systems, and data infrastructure. Rising power densities are creating increasingly complex thermal challenges, making these sectors strong candidates for intelligent cooling solutions.
Q. Beyond technology, what convinced you this could be a scalable global product?
A. Cooling demand is universal, but infrastructure is not. Conventional air-conditioning systems depend on stable grids and significant installation requirements. Our portable, personal cooling approach removes that dependency. Early validation came from market interest, with more than 90 per cent of high-intent demand originating from the United States (US) before launch.
Q. What is your go-to-market and commercialisation strategy?
A. We are pursuing a hybrid strategy centred on an initial Kickstarter launch and a dual-channel commercialisation model. Kickstarter provides market validation, global visibility, demand forecasting, and capital-efficient growth through pre-orders.
Commercially, we are beginning with a strong direct-to-consumer (D2C) focus while also targeting significant business-to-business (B2B) opportunities in healthcare, defence, hospitality, and industrial sectors. Embedded integrations are expected to become an important long-term revenue stream.
Q. What makes your business model defensible, and how are you approaching margins, manufacturing, and early traction?
A. Our defensibility comes from system-level integration, supported by patents, proprietary materials, and extensive optimisation across the technology stack. We are building a performance-driven category rather than competing on price.
Battery cost remains the largest contributor to product cost, followed by opportunities in component sourcing and manufacturing optimisation. We expect margins to improve as battery technology advances.
For manufacturing, we are partnering with Sahasra Electronics to achieve scalability, capital efficiency, and faster time to market, while retaining the option for selective backward integration. Pilot deployments have already demonstrated measurable improvements in efficiency and thermal performance under real-world conditions.
Q. What are the key challenges in scaling, and how are you addressing ecosystem support and sustainability?
A. Scaling requires managing manufacturing capacity, supply-chain reliability, and performance consistency at higher volumes. One potential constraint is the availability of thermoelectric modules if demand accelerates rapidly.
To address these challenges, we are leveraging government grants, incubation platforms such as T-Hub, and global programmes that provide funding, prototyping support, and market access.
Sustainability is integral to our approach. By reducing energy consumption, our solution lowers carbon emissions, while improved thermal management extends system lifespan and reduces material waste.
Q. What is your roadmap for innovation, global expansion, and long-term vision—and what will define your success in the near term?
A. Our roadmap focuses on advancing control systems, improving integration, and expanding into new applications, with predictive intelligence and ecosystem connectivity representing the next stage of development. Geographically, we are targeting markets with high energy costs and strong demand for efficiency-driven solutions.
Long-term, we see Chiltier evolving into a platform company for personal thermal management. The thermopod is only the first application; the same architecture can be extended to wearables, bedding, medical devices, and industrial systems.
Our vision is to make cooling an intelligent, adaptive, and sustainable layer that enhances performance across industries while creating a new category of human-centric thermal infrastructure.
For deep-tech start-ups, the advice is simple: solve real problems, focus on measurable impact, and remain patient. Success in this sector requires rigorous engineering and validation.
Over the next 12-18 months, our success will be defined by execution: delivering a successful Kickstarter launch, maintaining product quality at scale, and building user trust. If we achieve those goals, we believe we can define and lead this category globally.
