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Woofwoofnow Success Story
With the time, humans have made a plea to show humanity and compassion to the animals. Taking the same ideology forward, Mr. Sujit Paul with his cofounder Rosie Paul founded the startup Woofwoofnow- a global pet consulting platform, in 2018. The idea behind Woofwoofnow is to be the most Pet-friendly Institution and to build a place where Pet Parents can rely on. It's a platform where one can come and look for pet services to avail.
Read this article to know more about the Woofwoofnow, founders, logo, business model, revenue, growth, challenges, funding, and achievements.
Woofwoofnow - Company Highlights
- Startup Name-Woofwoofnow
- Headquarter-Bangalore
- Founders-Sujit Paul & Rosie Paul
- Sector-Pet Care
- Founded-2018
- Website Link-www.woofwoofnow.com
- Parent Company-Global Pet Consulting
Woofwoofnow - About & How it Works
Woofwoofnow is all about making pet care easier and better by providing various features and solutions to the pet parents. Woofwoofnow is getting features on their platform one after another. Unless one is truly compassionate for animals and understands the animal ecosystem it becomes very difficult for them to workout the terms that facilitate in the Pet ecosystem. Hence it's more appropriate and comfortable for the Woofwoofnow team to roll, the way they have been doing.
The team has successfully done Dip sticks on Tele-Consultation and Video Consultations. Other notable features on the platform include:
Customer Engagement Models – a complete solution for Pet Health
Customized Solution Approach to each pet (Specialized pet food products that are rich in vitamins, thereby ensuring a high-quality diet for pets.)
Access to experienced doctors and world-class Online Consultation (E-Consultation – initiated through the app)
Build pet care hospitals with advanced surgical treatments and the latest medical options. (Pet Hospital)
- A place for pets to socialize and play (Day Care)
- A place for pet's grooming (Pet Grooming & Salon)
- A solution to commuting woes of four-legged companions (Pet Taxi – no 1, A preferred Pet Cab in Bangalore )
- Emergency Health Care at door Step (Doctor on Wheels – Pet Ambulance)
- Handy Health Records at a click (Health Record Management – On Cloud Storage – in-app)
Woofwoofnow - Target Market
Pet ownership in India & worldwide has increased substantially over the past decade owing to change in the urban lifestyle and rising number of nuclear families. With an estimated 19 million pets, and 600,000 pets being adopted every year, the pet care industry in India shows massive potential. There is an increasing awareness about pet nutrition & well-being and pet owners are becoming more conscious about the products they buy and the services they avail. Pet owners are now focusing more on essential products that enhance the health and well-being of pets. They are no longer restricting themselves to just buying stuff for their pets but are now focusing on the overall development of their pets and providing the best environment to them.
According to Petex.in, the pet care market in India was valued at $265 million (₹ 1700 million) in 2017 and is expected to grow at 13.9% annually to become a $430 million (₹ 2780 million) market by 2020.
Woofwoofnow - Founders & Team Sujit Paul & Rosie Paul
Sujit Paul and Rosie Paul are the founders of this compassionate startup who also happen to be husband and wife. They both share a love for animals and have been an excellent combination of frequency match for the same.
Rosie Paul is an avid animal lover since her childhood and has multiple episodes in her life where she has worked in the pet care industry. Rosie was an academic scholar and has graduated from Mahadevi Birla High School, followed by her stint at Calcutta University and MBA from IMT Ghaziabad. Her interest areas include traveling and she has extensively traveled to Germany, Brussels, Italy, Bangladesh, Switzerland, Thailand, Singapore, Egypt and many more.
Dr. Sujit Paul carries over 25 years of experience in the industry. He is a proven leader and a part of Top Management with board-level experience. Sujit has worked for diverse organizations such as Retail, Hospitals, Health and Wellness industries. With his broad array of experience, Dr. Paul has extensive exposure in small medium and large multinational as well as large-sized organizations in various corporate cultures like Columbia Asia Hospitals Pvt. Ltd, Trust Chemist, and Druggist, Emeditek Services Limited, Apollo Hospitals, City Info Services, Chandras Chemicals, Kodak, Bata and Asian Paints. His recent assignment is being the Managing Director of a new startup "Stayhappi Pharmacy". This has again got his various accolades and achievements in setting up the brand with a mere one store to scaling up to 300+ stores Pan India in 365 days. All in all, he is currently associated with a startup that has ambassadors like Vidya Balan and Sourabh Ganguly who have endorsed the brand.
Dr. Sujit Paul is the author of innumerable books including his recent publication of Freeing Your Inner Self-awareness in the year 2018 and Journey of Awakening in the year 2019. Also, he is the founder of www.sujitpaul.com. He has received multiple awards and recognitions, the recent being conferred by Brand Vision and Times Now at a Global Stage, along with Gaur Gopal Das, Sunny Leone, Vidya Balan, Ayushman Khurana, Sonakshi Sinha, and many more. This versatile founder of Woofwoofnow also got featured in the Annual Coffee Table book. He was also nominated with the Top 100 Executives as "World Greatest Leaders 2018 – 19" by Asia One Magazine. He was felicitated with this award in Dubai.
Woofwoofnow has quite a lean team with 6 core initial members. However, the executive team consists of Dr. Sujit Paul at the helm, Rosie Paul - Founder and COO of the group, and Shaily Dubey - one of the early members in the company and a well-rounded professional with a computer science engineering degree and an MBA. Shaily started her career in the technology space and worked with leading MNCs. Post her stint with Intel SE Asia, she returned to Bangalore and found her calling with GPC. Since then she has been focusing upon how technological innovation can be leveraged in the pet care space to build solutions that pet parents can rely on and conveniently discover any service they may want to avail.
Woofwoofnow - Work Culture
If there's one thing that Sujit is very particular about, it's the work culture of his ventures. Not just this venture, but he's always ensured an amicable work culture in all his previous ventures as well. Culture is always top-down with complete transparency and high integrity in the internal team and with external entities. This is one of the strong foundations for Culture development. Dr. Sujit said: "Our employees are never questioned about the hours they put in the work, rather than their output of deliverables."
Dr. Sujit very strongly believes that "people are the Strength of organization and candidates who aspire to join Global Pet Consulting truly need to love their job, be compassionate towards animals, should have high ethics, value, and integrity." He is of the opinion that all members should drive towards the common organizational goal. Sujit does not even care for micro policing with his employees rather gives them ample freedom. He genuinely believes that employees should be part of the Growth Story of the Company.
Woofwoofnow - How It All Started?
It all started in the year 2016 when the couple lost their pet - Daisy. The family was on an out of station travel and Daisy was in her favorite boarding. Suddenly one night when she was not feeling very well. The boarding attendant neither got any vehicle who would allow taking Dogs into the clinic nor did he have access to any Doctors in the night. As a result, they lost their beloved pet Daisy.
The pain of losing Daisy germinated the idea of their startup- Woofwoofnow. The couple started with the research in 2017. Their first respondents were family and friends and when they looked further they got to hear similar stories from them. Simultaneously the cofounders realized that there is no true ecosystem for Pet Care in India.
They were quite surprised. Given India's growth in Pet and the rate of pet adoption, how was this whole sector overlooked? Therefore in 2018 conceived this company "Global Pet Consulting" with the brand name of Woofwoofnow. Early in 2019 the website and the mobile application got ready to hit the markets. And then they started meeting the best Veterinary Doctors in Bangalore. They carefully evaluate the doctor's experience before getting them on board in their venture because they want to ensure that the best service is provided to the pet parents. By this time the cofounders had realized that working with animals needs more compassion and the aggregator model of logistics would not work. Hence they rolled out their own fleets of Hatchback, Sedan, and SUV and started with the service in April 2019.
Woofwoofnow - Name, Tagline & Logo
While the cofounders were doing their primary research, they figured that the need for a pet consultation is not only in India but also in the UK and the USA. The Indian market is growing rapidly and the opportunities are enormous. Parallel in the international market every second house has a pet but without any pet consultations available which makes the target market size almost double than the Indian market. Hence the company was named "Global Pet Consulting" - and the logo to depicts pet animals like a dog and a cat.
The idea behind naming the venture Woofwoofnow was the fact that though animals can't talk but they can very well communicate through their voices. So to signify responding immediately to these pets, this name seemed quite appropriate.
Woofwoofnow - User Acquisition
The first customer for Woofwoofnow online vet consultation was a gentleman from Gurgaon. His name was Sudipto Chatterjee who had a lab dog. This man was particularly tired and frustrated with the local vets for various reasons. And he was looking to get a second opinion with them.
There onwards, they have done Pilots with various rescue cases wherein the customers wanted Teleconsultation/Video Consultation with the Doctors. Woofwoofnow's first Pet Taxi Customer was a case wherein an Indi dog was run over and the leg was fractured. The customer had tried contacting a lot of emergency services and waited for a long time but nothing happened and none of them came. That's when Woofwoofnow took over and the customer was so overwhelmed with the service that he agreed to give a Video footage feedback about his views on Woofwoofnow.
Woofwoofnow - Business & Revenue Model
Reports reveal that India is the fastest-growing pet care market in the world. Urbanization, rise in nuclear families, changing perceptions towards pets and pet owners are driving the growth, with which India pet care market is expected to continue to record double-digit value growth on the back of pet humanization coupled with growing disposable income. India's pet care industry is growing rapidly as the middle class increasingly demands quality pet care and services.
Woofwoofnow's business model rotates in the Pet ecosystem and the conveyance. As Ola and Uber is for human rides, Woofwoofnow Pet Taxis are for Animal rides. They are already now the most Preferred Pet Taxi in the Silicon Valley of India. The revenue model rotates from the Interlinked Business right from Pet Tele and Video Consultation to Pet Taxi logistics and the Pet Clinic and Hospitals.
In their current POC from April 2019, they have done quite a few Tele and Video Consultation with the Vets for the rescue cases. Woofwoofnow is growing consistently month on month in the Pet Taxi Bookings and other relative services.
Woofwoofnow - Startup Challenges
Challenges are inevitable for startups especially when it has no backing of the robust funding. When the cofounders started their journey they understood the cash burn right during the website and application development stage. The team believes in quality and well understands that it takes time to build traction. Hence they have to carefully measure the cash burns.
There's one incident that challenged the company's existence. A dummy customer booked a pet taxi and called in a remote location. When the cab arrived, it was vandalized by a local competitor. In such incidences, loyal customer support can put the firm back on the map and that's what fortunately happened with Woofwoofnow.
Woofwoofnow - Competitors
Unfortunately, this sector from a Healthcare perspective is unnoticed and untapped for multiple reasons. This sector cannot be ventured by everyone because one needs a deep understanding of the animal ecosystem. Indian market does have brands that cater to pet food and other hygiene products and services but there's no venture dealing in health and technology services to facilitate the immediate treatment of pets.
Woofwoofnow - Funding & Investors
Currently, Woofwoofnow is bootstrapped. Though the team is on talking terms with various investors for the seed round. The investors seem to be interested. But the team feels that it'd add value to the venture if it is invested in by an investor who understands the pet ecosystem and has extreme love and compassion for them.
Woofwoofnow - Growth
For any startup, it takes time to stand out in the market. Woofwoofnow is growing consistently at an organic pace. As mentioned above their Pet Taxis are the most preferred ones in the IT hub of India – Bangalore. Their sole motive is "Genuine Service," For the same, the cofounder and COO, Rosie Paul has recently bagged the Startup Women Entrepreneur of the Year on 26th September 2019 from the DY Chief Minister and Principal Secretary of Karnataka. Along with all this, they are also working to garner Series A funding.
Woofwoofnow - FAQ's
How long does an Tele/e-Consultation last?
e-Consultations typically last between 05-15 minutes.
What can I expect during an Tele/e-Consultation?
You can request a Tel/e-Consultation for non-critical guidance on pet-related issues. e-Consultations are intended to provide clarity for pet owners and as an alternative to Internet searching for answers which can often be misleading. Tele/e-Consultations provide pet owners with peace of mind with service from their trusted veterinarian.
Can the veterinarian prescribe medication during the Tele/ e-Consultation?
Prescriptions cannot be provided during an e-Consultation generally, however, in certain instances, it may be possible as well.
How do I schedule an Tele/ e-Consultation?
Members should log in to the Woofwoofnow platform, and complete the -step set-up process. Payment is made in advance usually and a wide selection of appointments are available. e-Consultations are conducted on our secure platform via webcam, similar to a Skype chat.
What information does a pet health record contain?
A pet health record includes the basic records of the Pet's health.
Where do I access my pet’s health record?
Members can access their pet’s health record from anywhere in the world using any device with an internet connection. Simply go to the Woofwoofnow website and click “Sign In” to enter the platform. You can also access the information using the app platform.
Woofwoofnow - Conclusion
Woofwoofnow do not believe in a one-solution-fits-all Pet Parents. The Doctor’s custom solution approach means working closely with the Pet lovers to provide services that not only fit their Pet’s Consultation requirements but also offers a high degree of Speed and Seamlessness. Regardless of the Pet, all the Pet parents would have access to experienced Doctors as well as to world class Online Consultation experience to ensure all Consultations have desired outcomes. The company's Mission and Vision is to be the most Pet friendly Institution; to build a place Where Pet Parents can rely on and come to find and discover any Pet service they might want to avail.
