Gaurav Ajmera, Founder, Vetic, ET HealthWorld
Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld, spoke to Gaurav AjmeraFounder, Vetic, to know more about the emerging pet care industry that is fast growing in the pet food segment and there is an equal expansion in the veterinary clinics across India.
Pet Market:India
The pet market in India is at a very interesting phase, where due to multiple factors such as social isolation, nuclear families, urbanisation, and higher disposable income, all of these factors are enabling higher pet adoption. Today, the pet market is roughly around 1.5 to 2 billion dollars, consisting of 30 million pets. In the last four years, the market has grown from 21 million pets to around 32 million pets, projected to be around a $6 to $7 billion market in the next five years. The Indian pet market is at a very nascent stage compared to where global markets are. The US, for example, has around 68% of households owning pets; there are 140 million pets in the US. In the last 15 years, China has grown at a staggering pace to the point where it has matched the US with around 150 million pets, but only 25% of households have pets. So there is a long way to go from here to India.
Pet Healthcare
The pet market predominantly consists of two key segments. One is pet food, and another is pet health care, also called vet care. Pet food is one of the biggest segments globally. There are brands like Mars, Purina that have been dominant across the US, China, and Europe. All of these brands have entered India in the last 10 to 15 years. Today, the market is dominated by these four to five big FMCG brands. But there are a lot of opportunities for new brands to come in and capture the market. On the other end, vet care is at a very nascent stage, where the market is predominantly dominated by individual veterinary clinics. This is unlike how the markets are in the US where close to 20% of the market is corporatized and there are chains of veterinary clinics like Bainfield, VCA, which have more than 1000 veterinary clinics. Pet healthcare consists of different segments like consultation, treatment, vaccination, surgery, and medicine. In this context, vaccination is one of the key segments where it is important to ensure your pet’s quality of life as well as his life expectancy. Today, for example, dogs need to be vaccinated with four key vaccines for their entire lifetime. Cats, on the other hand, need to be vaccinated every two years. In countries like the US and Europe, they have reached a stage where a lot of these vaccinations are not required because the whole ecosystem is vaccinated.Pet care market: Challenges
One of the key challenges in the pet care market is a lack of standardized and quality care. As human health evolved in the last 20 years, a lot of this was corporatized with the entry of Max, Medanta, Apollos, and Fortis into the world. On the veterinary health side, there is a lack of standardization and quality brands. Pet healthcare, although evolving, has a lot of challenges. The key is the quality of service provided to pets on every single visit. The second is the quality of clinical and medical infrastructure. Third is the lack of any technological advancements that have happened in pet health care, and finally, and the biggest one, is the lack of any credible and trusted brand across the country.VETIC
The Indian pet market is in a very interesting phase because 85% of pet parents in India are first-time pet parents. Being a first-time pet parent, it is very difficult to understand the nuances that go into maintaining a pet—what is the right food for him, what are the different health care requirements for him—and that’s when there are a lot of gaps in knowledge. There are a lot of gaps around pet health care as well as pet nutrition.
The idea of Vetic came about because me and my wife decided to get a pet Simba. Simba had a lot of health issues initially, and that led to us visiting multiple vets. I could see the gap in the vet healthcare ecosystem, and that’s how Vetic was born. Vetic today solves for all pet healthcare needs, right from consultation, vaccination, grooming, and surgery, all under the same roof with the enablement of technology. Vetic is a modern chain of veterinary clinics that uses technology to provide the best medical care for pets every single time. Vetic started with its first clinic in August 2022 in Gurgaon and currently has 13 clinics across the NCR. The plan for Vetic is to scale to around 40 clinics in June 2024 across all major metros in India.
