What is the future of?PetTech?

If you search “PetTech” on Google you’ll hardly find any news about the space. There will be a few articles about PetTech companies raising money and some vague predictions of the future.

So, if there is nothing interesting out there, why not create it yourself?

After talking to hundreds of pet parents and lots of vets, here is what I think is currently missing from the space.

Before I begin it is useful to separate PetTech, everything pet parent and pet-related, and VetTech, anything that can help vets to be better at their jobs. Both have lots of room for innovation, but I’ll stick to PetTech for now ??

Education & Learning

I’m very pleased that people are taking pets more seriously. Millennials are trying to do research on how to be good parents, but as we all know Google is not the best place to go if you only want trustworthy and accurate information. If you type anything pet-related into Google you will see lots of different forums and blogs that give contradictory advice (surprise, surprise there are also anti-vaxxer in the pet space). 

There is definitely a space for apps and websites that create online courses and learning programs for new pet parents. This information can vary from nutrition to general health to training. Pet parents are happy to pay for these courses so there is a clear way to monetise them. Having this information personalised and broken down into actionable advice can also help (self-promotion alert: personalised care advice is part of Strelka’s offering)

Pet adoption & buying

With the COVID-19 pet buying frenzy, we saw a lot of scams which resulted in mistrust between future pet parent and breeders. Having a better platform for people to buy and adopt pets can definitely help. You can monetise it with verified breeders, add courses or even get people subscribing to ongoing services like a subscription box for puppies. 

DNA testing for dogs might be also a good way to decrease the risks when buying a pet. 

The key challenge for “pet buying” space is that it is centred around a single transaction, which can be an issue for long-term retention.

Pet Care

This is a big one so let me split it into three sections: Televet, AI and Test Kits

Televet

We’ve seen Televet taking off during the pandemic. The uptake of Televet can be partly explained by the lockdown, but also, the influx of new pet parents resulted in vets being overloaded. If you try to make an appointment with a local vet today the chances are that you’ll get it in two weeks. 

I want to write about Televet more as I’ve seen so many companies popping up. It is a very straightforward model but can be a dangerous game. Why? 

Televet has two sides: attracting users to use the app and attracting vets to consult users. As more companies enter the market everyone would be forced to bring the prices down to capture the market share. At the same time, there will be fewer vets available for Televet, so companies would have to pay more to vets to attract them. 

For anyone interested in the business model. An hour of a junior vet costs ￡15–￡20. A vet can do four appointments an hour. The average cost of an online appointment is ￡20. So, you get ￡80 in revenue and give ￡15–￡20 to a vet. You end up with ￡60 and then you need to pay for other non-vet employees, marketing and operational expenses. Looking at other sectors I foresee a big US company coming in with lots of money in the bank and forcing UK competitors to drop their prices. As there are very few ways to differentiate between the companies it can become a simple price competition. 

For those who want to build yet another Televet solution, you don’t need developers, just combine Calendly and Zoom and you get a very cheap, yet good Televet solution.

I also believe there are more opportunities for chat functionality with vet nurses, rather than video calling. Most of the questions can be answered by a vet nurse and if you really need to talk to a vet, most likely you need to go and see one in person.

AI

As one of my favourite jokes goes “you write machine learning in Python and AI in PowerPoint”. The reason I included AI in this list is that I believe there are some interesting opportunities in the future. 

In the short term, I see a big challenge of data fragmentation in the pet care space. Bringing pet health data together into one place can help both vets and pet parent to identify early warning signs by looking into the pet’s historic data and comparing individual users to others of the same breed and age. 

We really need to work together to standardise the way how we capture the data and how we use it to make our pets healthier.

There are opportunities for image recognition to spot eye problems. There are also opportunities for video recognition to spot hip problems. 

But we can go much further than this. There are so many opportunities in using AI for early diagnostic and disease prevention. 

The below image is dedicated to all my friends in tech who will laugh at me for using the word AI, five, well, now six times in this article.

Test Kits

A more interesting area for me has been home test kits. You can test your dog faeces and urine to check worms, digestions problems, diabetes and much more. You can also partner up with a clinic to do blood tests and create personalised health plans based on them.

I personally love Thriva and I believe there are opportunities for companies like Thriva in the pet space. 

Test kits can be fundamental for preventative care and they can also be very educational to pet parents.

We are actually launching a number of test kits at Strelka, so I’ll be sharing with you how it goes. 

IoT

I’m not a hardware guy and I’ve never pretended to be one. So, this will be quick and straight to the point.

Smart Collars

This seems like a great idea, but I haven’t seen much adoption (at least in the UK). I think people need to have a better idea about the value that these smart collars can bring. 

We can build a Vitality insurance model where pet parents who take their dogs for a walk every day for at least X hours get rewards and lower premiums. 

Combining smart collars with AI can show tons of interesting insights. For example, we can track how much a dog is scratching which can be an indicator of fleas or other diseases. Tracking headshaking and other movements can be a sign of other health problems.

Food dispensers & Water dispensers

I’m particularly interested in water dispensers and here’s why. So far, I haven’t met a single pet parent who understands the importance of measuring water intake. There is a myth that you just leave a bowl with water and keep it full. The reality is that many dogs can under or over-drink which can cause health issues. Also, monitoring water intake can be a great way to see early warning sign of some of the diseases.

This can be literally life-saving as kidney diseases can develop fast, but noticing changes in water intake and getting a notification on your phone can make you act much faster.

Smart home & Smart dog houses

There are ways to integrate smart house systems into your pet’s life. The temperature and humidity can be adjusted accordingly and the same goes for lights and noise. For example, the music can be ok for you, but the smart house system can choose to bring it down a bit to protect your dog’s ears.

Smart dog houses is an interesting avenue to explore for dogs that live outside. It can control temperature, lights and it can also have a camera that connects to your phone. A bit creepy, right?

Pet Food

You’ll hardly meet a millennial these days who are feeding kibble to his/her dog. There are so many opportunities in having delivery services for raw, cooked and vegan (some may argue with this one) dog food. 

There are very few healthy treats out there for dogs. If we, humans, are now getting such a variety of healthy treats, why our pets can’t? There is definitely a huuuge market for tasty and healthy dog treats and we still haven't seen enough companies driving the change.

Go to any park and you will be in the middle of the “which is the best treat” debate. Pick the wrong side and you’ll be labelled a “bad parent” and you better off looking for a new park.

Subscription Boxes

Surprisingly the subscription box space is not as busy as you would expect in the pet space. 

What about the monthly delivery of treats and toys? Maybe samples of new food?

There are some companies that are doing it, but there is definitely more space. 

You can also deliver supplements, shampoos and teeth cleaning products to pet parents who always want to try something new for their little friends.

I think creating something truly unique and fun can work. There will be definitely a company that can execute it well. For example, you can turn the box for delivery into something a dog can play with or something that your cat might want to choose as a next home. 

Services

A lot of people talk about separation anxiety after the lockdown is over, which means there will be a demand for two types of services 

1. Finding dog sitters, walkers and daycares. There are some websites and platforms for finding dog sitters and daycares, but they are far from perfect. Having an easy way for people to find trusted service providers would definitely be important as we leave the lockdown.
2. For those who either can’t afford or don’t want to work with dog sitters, there is a lot of work required on behavioural training (not traditional sit, jump and stay). Maybe we are entering the world of meditation apps for dogs and cats — who knows. Currently, a good behaviourist will charge you ￡200-￡300 for a two-hour session. This seems like an industry to be disrupted. 

We can also see an increase in services that provide home vet visits. So far, the home visit space doesn’t have good unit economics. Vets “waste” time travelling between the appointments, but for companies that can effectively manage the operational aspect of this, this can be a great opportunity.

Wellness

The idea of wellness and taking proactive care of your health has been there for some time at least for humans. I personally believe that there is a multi-billion opportunity for pet wellness.

Since we started working on Strelka, which we believe can help hundreds of thousands of pet parents understand their pets’ health better, I’ve been asked about competition. 

I wholeheartedly believe that companies in the PetTech space should actually try to support each other rather than see each other as competitors. We all want the same: to make our pets healthier and happier, so why not work together? 

Here at Strelka we officially welcome more competitors!

What did I miss guys? What do you think is missing from the pet space?

What is Strelka: Imagine having a personal vet, nutritionist and trainer all in one place 24/7. That’s what Strelka is. Check it out: strelka.io