Did you know that October 29 is a National Cat Day? If you have a cat at home, it might be a good time to force-hug them and give them a nice treat.
According to an article by KrAsia, a global market research firm Euromonitor shares that the trend of providing a decent life that doesn’t revolve around eating, sleeping, and excreting is called “pet humanisation”. This has caused a spike in startups focussing solely on your pet’s wellbeing, from “social petworking” events, organic food, beverage for pets, to pet insurance.
In Southeast Asia, analyst firm Future Market Insights shares that the pet care market is expected to hit 1.4 billion by 2020, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 6.8 per cent during the forecast period.
Thanks to Taylor Swift, Cat Day is an inspiration for us to go around Southeast Asia and discover startups that use technology to better provide for furry sons and daughters you have at home. These are some of the gems we found.
Furpal, Singapore
Furpal just got a foothold on Singapore’s increasingly crowded pet-tech market. According to an article by Coconuts, tt matches dog lovers to owners for paid playdates, which is proven to be a hit among pet lovers that don’t have or can’t have pets on their own.
Established by Kylie Teo in July 2019, it allows customers to pay start from US$10 per hour for each visitor to spend time with the chosen dog from the app. It’s like Tinder but instead of a human, we get to a dog for our date, and if that’s not the purest thing in this world, we don’t know what is.
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Each dog on the platform gets a description of their character traits, basic info about their owner, and available meeting slots. This way, Teo said, the concept of “marketplace” wouldn’t be limited only for pet adoption, but also for just a casual playdate and pet walkers and sitters.
To ensure safety, Furpal said it has a thorough screening system of every owner as well as in-person temperament assessments of the dogs that tend to be more aggressive by nature. Its community vetting process is also meant to ensure that “borrowers” who book a furry pal are aware of the potential risks of playing with dogs.
Furpal said it aims to educate more owners about the benefits of having their dogs socialise with new people, and to help borrowers learn more about dog care from increased interaction with the canines and their owners.
Pawrus, Singapore
Pawrus’ catchphrase is “pet care, simplified”, and it is exactly what it offers Pawrus was founded in 2014 with a mission to educate pet owners on appropriate pet care.
Kevin Yeo, started Pawrus with Jasline Aiw in 2014, when Yeo couldn’t find what he was looking for in a pet care centre because the staff wasn’t too helpful. Now, as co-founder, Yeo, who’s a professional and certified dog trainer claims the title Chief Trainer, while Aiw focusses on styling and pet grooming as a certified professional pet stylist.
Yeo noted that Pawrus focusses on giving it all to customer experiences, to the point where they would remember the pet’s name. Such committed service is achieved with what Yeo called a well-researched content that ensures a top-notch knowledge of products sold on the platform.
“We don’t just recommend just based on internet knowledge. We consult veterinary books and cross-reference the ingredients used for our pet food to know what kinds of allergies that could come up for each brand,” Yeo said in an interview with Vulcan Post.
Similar pet-focussed e-commerces that are based in the country include PerroMart, Nekojam, MOBY’s Petshop, Kohepets, and Poly Pets.
From Indonesia, Petku is also an online pet-supplies e-commerce.
From Brunei Darussalam, there’s Nimanja, the country’s online pet store, and pet retail chain.
The Grateful Dog
In 2017, besties who grew up loving cats and dogs, Rachel Pereira and Sandee Goh launched The Grateful Dog, out of personal concern for the health of their furkids, Lucy the Boston terrier and Clash the beagle. The two found out about the existing negative effects of highly processed kibble and canned food and began a research journey to find a formula with prepared homemade meals for fur babies, and two years later, The Grateful Dog was born.
Both Pereira and Goh are certified pet food nutrition specialists, and The Grateful Dog offers veterinary-reviewed meals with an organic supplement blend in the AVA-certified kitchen.
Also Read: Meet the 8 Southeast Asian startups who will receive US$1-2M each from Sequoia’s Surge programme
The duo shared with The Straits Times that they kicked off operation with a capital of US$64,000, and has now extended its business to ‘The Grateful Give Back’, a platform for dog lovers to help furkids in need.
Similar pet home-cooked meal delivery services include PetChef, based in Malaysia.
JomPaw, Malaysia
Co-founded by Joanne Lee, Agnez Lim, and Ngan Szu Mun, JomPaw is an online pet lovers community that provides all types of pet services from boarding, walking, training, and even pet taxi.
JomPaw offers a wide range of home-based cage-free services through connecting pet parents with the network of loving and trustworthy pet sitters that provides personalised care 24/7 for pets.
In an interview with First Classe, Lee said: “Our idea stems from our own experience: Sometimes when we send our pets to a boarding service or pet hotel, they come back with ticks.”
Commercial pet services often leave no choice but cage up pets and give not enough attention due to caring for more than one pet. On top of that, not every pet facility can take in less common pets like lizards, snakes, and spiders or pets with specific needs.
To make sure the quality of its service, JomPaw said it will assess the sitters’ experience with pets and the size of their house or car and whenever a request comes in, the matchmaking is being done based on the information provided.
In August 2017, the company participated in the Japan chapter of 500 Startups accelerator, followed by participation in the local WTF Accelerator programme to establish local connections and grow the business.
Similar pet care matchmaking platform that is based in Singapore includes PetBacker, which addresses the trust issues of having a stranger care for your pet using a built-in trust point system for every sitters and walkers profile and a spot check by its team, and soon will as a dog tracking feature that allows app-based pet-tracking.
From Singapore, there’s also Furwy that offers similar services to connect pet owners with pet sitters.
Pets My Heart, Malaysia
Pets My Heart is a Malaysian pet-tech startup that introduces the concept of a monthly subscription box service for pet owners. It was founded by Lam Woon Cherk and a few others to deliver a box of different treats and toys to customers every month.
Pets My Heart curates and customise the content of the box according to the pet that will enjoy the toys and treats. Lam described its business as “an e-commerce store that sells subscription pet gift boxes”.
Each pet gift box by Pets My Heart contains a combination of four to six different treats and toys with different content each month, some of which -the company claimed- cannot be bought from the market.
Pets My Heart aims to pique on the surprise element of not knowing what is in the next box and to help pet owners save time for such things, and save money.
PETOInternational, Indonesia
PETOInternational (PETO) is an Indonesia-based mobile app that offers a range of pet services for a cat, dog, parrot, or hamster. It was first introduced in September 2017 as a “Pet-tinder”, with its main feature PETOdate, a social networking feature to connect pets with their owners in a close community.
PETO was co-founded by CEO Ditya Nandiwardhana and Elmo D. Alfared, who got inspired when encountering difficulties finding a proper medication and partner for Nandiwardhana’s cat.
According to an article in The Jakarta Post, the app offers interactive Hump game that lets pet owners play as their pets and gain points by humping or attacking other pets.
Also Read: 7 startups in Asia pet parents should know
PETO also features Rescue, a feature that allows users to donate and adopt animals, as well as an in-app shop, where users can purchase pet essentials and have them delivered. PETO VETS enables users to locate the closest vet from their area.
PetInsure, Thailand
As the name suggests, PetInsure is a Thailand-based pet insurance startup.
According to Insurance Business Mag, Thailand has a pet industry worth around US$659.5 million, seeking to care for the 9 million pet dogs and cats in the country. Pets are eligible for coverage their entire lives, as long as the policy is renewed.
Its pet insurance packages cover all veterinary bills, including vaccination, treatment for illnesses or accidents, and death. It also offers an in-house veterinary team to provide home-service check-ups for pets.
It won US$6,000 cash prize at the Samart Innovation Award, a competition that aims to strengthen the country’s technology industries.
PetInsure is operating under its parent firm Dong Sung Ki Innovation.
With Singapore leading the region as a country with the most pet-tech operation, Malaysia and Thailand are catching up as the industry has grown into a promising sector. However, frontier markets like Myanmar and Cambodia are yet to welcome pet-tech startup trends.
With more people become more aware of animals’ welfare, including domesticated pets, this list will just keep growing in time to come.
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Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash
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