Building for the youth in the Indian petcare industry
By Varun Sadana, Co-founder, Supertails
Even as the pet adoption rate has been increasing over the last few years, the last 2 years of the pandemic have acted as a catalyst in pet adoption. With isolation, people have begun to find solace and companionship in pets. India currently has about 25 Mn domesticated pets in India, of which 11Mn are in urban cities.
As per reports, millennials and Gen Z constitute the majority of the pet parent population. The ‘woke’ generation takes pride in calling themselves “pet parents” as against the previous generation that used to refer to themselves as pet owners. To do justice to their newly acquired role, the emerging pet parent community is seeking a strong ecosystem to ensure the health and wellness of their pets. They rely on premium pet food, expert advice, and guidance which has paved the way for the emergence of new apps and labs, groomers, trainers, nutritionists, behaviorists, and pet food deliveries.
Over the past two and a half years, we’re seeing that the pet food and services sector has illustrated the biggest industry growth stories, clearly making many brands emerge in the sector. One such brand is Supertails, a one-stop pet care platform providing pet supplies and high-quality digital services was formed to support the new pet parents in the journey. In our journey of making petcare accessible to the young, we’ve got some lessons. Here’s what we’re looking to create at Supertails.
Supporting pet parents with expert advice
There is a lot of lack of awareness around pet care. When humans become parents of a baby, they have a lot of generational knowledge and support from their family that helps them raise a child. For the first-generation GenZ pet parents, this support doesn’t exist.
At Supertails, we are determined to create products and services with a team of in-house experts, both in the pet healthcare and behavior space. Additionally, with a pet supplies platform, Supertails brings the widest assortment of supplies in the country. All our efforts are going into building a holistic support system for pet parents.
Bring the most prominent brands for pet supplies to the country
The new pet parent is confused about what to get for their pets, and most people go for the most popular brands without really knowing the variety that’s out there. India has so many homegrown brands emerging in the pet food, accessories, and grooming supplies spaces and Supertails aims to be the hub for them getting discovered and admired. We are building a one-stop destination where the pet parents find all their end-to-end needs under one roof.
Create a hub of credible information with the help of content and social media
The new generation of young pet parents are conscious of what information they consume and are also concerned about the authenticity of the source. They are tech-savvy and practically live on social media. One of our goals is to help every pet parent in the country become a better caregiver, and in that, expert-led content and social media reach plays a huge role. Our Instagram is our biggest source of learning content, where we help pet parents with content in an engaging way.
Customer obsession
The urban millennial and Gen Z pet parents form our customer base in India. For them, experience is paramount and that’s what we aim to give them. Over the last few months, we have been fulfilling 80 percent of our orders in metro cities within a single day. We have also assigned ‘Pet Relationship Managers’ to customers for queries. We want to give a personalized experience to our community.
Build a team of rockstars
Even though this isn’t customer-facing, building a stellar team of people is one of our top priorities. We have always been vocal about how important our people are to us. Every member of our team brings a unique set of skills and background experiences that make us better each day. Supertails is built by entrepreneurs and experts in their respective fields. This year, we intend to bring more such people with the goal of creating a pool of rockstars that will create an impressive mark in the pet care space.
Apart from this, a lot lies ahead in the industry to be accomplished. It is just the beginning of this industry making its move towards being an organized sector and we’re super excited to see where it’ll take us.
