It as a modest story to start with in 2007, but Dogspot.in has come up as India’s No. 1 portal under pet category. As clear from the name itself, the startup focuses on dogs and is India’s most visited dog portal. The team members of the startup enjoy a love of dogs and then making entrepreneurship reach every nook and corner of a business opportunity. This throws another example of following ones dream, believing in it and creating a success story.
We had an email interview with one of the co-founders, Rana Atheya.
Genesis of your startup—how you started?
I am an extreme dog lover since childhood; my better half (Vizal Atheya) is equally interested in pets. Given this background, I evolved my passion into a business. Subsequently, Shailesh Visen came on board as a partner spearheading technology and Gaurav Malik came on board as a partner spearheading Marketing and Strategy. This makes the core team of DogSpot.
While this was started as a modest hobby venture but in a short span of three years, DogSpot has become category leader in India as per ComScore. While this is a great tome to be in the Pet Industry however there are challenges as well. The industry is not organised and there are hardly any organized distribution channels. The fact that there is no aggregator of information and content presents an opportunity and we are currently playing in this space.
Challenges faced in the start-up phase?
Arranging funds was the challenge. This has limited our growth but has not deterred us to keep on moving and building a strong organization.
Business model of your idea?
Currently the advertising is the business model. We will soon be having eShop on DogSpot. Ecommerce is going to be main source of income.
Revenue principles?
Creating value by organising information.
How you keep abreast with the competitors?
We believe that the opportunity is big enough for a handful of players. We believe in health competition because that only helps us innovate and also expand the market. However we have created a few entry barriers- Over the past 3 years we have collaborated with offline pet players, kennel clubs (KCI, GKC, etc), and many others in the industry. We are digital partners to most of the big Dog related events like the IIPTF, Gurgaon kennel Club Dog Shows, etc. Going forward we will be further investing in strengthening these alliances to strengthen our value chain and build the brand.
What is the role of innovation?
Innovation creates lot of value for the users. We have been growing more than 100% year on year in terms of traffic. Every time we bring in new innovation for our users traffic and user experience exceeds expectations
What was your first big success?
We were chosen to be partners of an international dog event organised by Kennel Club of India. This event was executed by Gurgaon Kennel Club in 2008. We got a big platform to integrate technology and dogdom.
This event gave us scaled up marketing as well as growth.
What’s for future?
To lead pet category in India on Internet.
