‘ Home4Pet ‘ looks to expand across metros

Some homes have it all for pets

The three of them are sworn animal lovers. Early on, they identified a gap in the market for pet services. There was clearly no single platform which took care of all pet needs under one umbrella. The trio soon decided to bring diversity to the project. They came together and set up Home4Pet, a one-stop product and service provider for pet parents.

Rajeev Talwar (46) is a seasoned professional with profound knowledge of finances and animals. He is the brain behind Home4Pet for the pet lovers. Avtar Singh Virk (47), a thoroughbred risk and fraud management degree holder from the US. Virk looks after the logistics, operations, market tie-ups and other areas. Vinod Agarwal (46), a science graduate is a trainer and handler of pet animals himself.

Talwar speaks at length with Baishali Mukherjee about the conception and shaping up of Home4Pet:

The conception

A random conversation over a tea session with the founder of an e-tailor company led us to this idea. Keeping in view the paucity of time (which is a catalyst in new and emerging buying patterns) and having faced challenges ourselves in buying pet services online turned out to be a eureka moment. Next three days saw rigorous research on the internet looking up people offering similar services. We left no stone unturned in looking up merchants. The zilch was found in India and that was the birth of Home4Pet.

Dipping into our own finances, we took off Home4Pet. Our core team consists of old buddies that have stayed connected in various phases of our corporate life and share a common love towards animals. We all were itching to carve a niche outside of our corporate worlds. The selection of the initial team members was a very challenging and a time consuming exercise though. Our concept for Home4Pet being niche meant that all who came on board had to be compassionate towards animals.

Operation module

We at Home4Pet aim at providing the pet parent with products and services that range from all pet categories. This include pet food, pet toys, pet designer clothing and bedding. Others include vets on call – both allopathic and homeopathic, pet burial services, pet trainers. There are also pet spas, pet café, pet photography, pet security tags. Pet rehabilitation and fitness equipment, pet magazines, pet birthday organisers. Online pet training courses and to top it all- pet insurance to keep them secure from all medical contingencies at wallet friendly prices.

Home4Pet is an online marketplace where there is pet at one side and vendor on the other side. The pet parent selects and pays us the money. We deduct our fees and pay the rest to the vendor who has displaced his products online. It works seamlessly like any other e-commerce platform. It makes the experience hassle free and just a click away. At present, we operate out of an office in Delhi and have a team of four people along with the founders to run the show.

Challenges

We sat every day sketching a blueprint for Home4Pet. We searched through data on the net as to how to bring together this concept from paper to portal. Endless sessions of tea in hotel lounges and brainstorming finally brought us to a list of services that could be started from phase one.

The most arduous task was to find the right people for the services. We travelled the length and breadth of the city to speak with these people. We educated them about our concept. Three months on and we could convince them about the first set of providers that would be on board. They were hesitant but we reminded them to have faith in us and in our concept.

The deep faith in our concept and vision was what eventually led to Home4Pet.

Growth chart

The portal went live on August, 2016. We got our first orders from September onwards. We stepped up the Social Media presence. This resulted in curiosity among the pet parents, now placing orders with us. We are on a healthy growth trajectory. We have unique hits of about 10k monthly on to our website. The average ticket size is about 2k. In terms of numbers India stands at a 20 per cent share of the eight-billion-dollar global market. Now it has a potential to reap YoY 35 per cent buoyancy only in terms of food. The rest is untold story yet to unfold through Home4Pet.

Uniqueness

It would be fair to say that we are pioneers in this concept. That makes us a market leader in India. Now in its infancy, this market has the potential to grow exponentially. We are working towards streamlining and bringing a structure to the otherwise unorganised market. We have been selected as one of the top 100 companies, judged by an eminent jury at a Mumbai Facilitation ceremony. The existing services offered are restricted to only products and food on varied ad platforms. Our cyber presence will be as aggregators encompassing all services and products under one umbrella of Home4Pet.

Future plans

We at Home4Pet aim to have a PAN India presence. We want to create a brand which people could associate with. Our next phase of expansion would be to tap into four other metros. We are also on discussion with the right channels for an overseas foray.

How viable is a pet-care business in India, given the population and scarce resources? Do share your views.