What happens when two family members who adore dogs swap notes about how to balance demanding jobs with becoming pet parents? An idea for a startup is born. That’s how Vani Aiyer met her cousin’s husband, co-founder Vivek Srinivas, and made the decision to leave her senior management position at Nissan India in order to embrace the challenging and exciting nature of starting a business.
“We both come from the corporate world and had to put in long workdays and travel a lot to take care of our dogs,” she says. “Just as Vivek has three—Bruno, Zara, and Rowdy—I have three as well: Boss, Queen, and Laptop.” The dogs come in a variety of breeds, ages, and health conditions, so occasionally there are sudden surprises. “Vivek’s dog, Bruno, would have fits, but he would usually recover by the time he was taken to the vet. Thus, the veterinarian was never able to determine the severity of the fits, according to her.
These medical crises persuaded the two that home health monitoring gadgets for pets were necessary, much as home blood pressure, blood sugar, or oxygen saturation monitors.
This was the beginning of Vetinstant Healthcare, which was first a bootstrapped company and go-to-market product before evolving into an IIT Madras-incubated startup with multiple patents and ambitious growth goals. “Kria Law was the first agency we hired when we started the business because we needed to file patents for our inventions,” Aiyer explains.
“Bharath Vathul of Kria law recommended us to the IIT Madras Incubation Cell.” There, we had an interview and were inducted,” she claims. Their initial investment round coincided with that induction. We aim to raise $3 million in the next two years, having already received a seed investment of ~1.15 crore from the ‘Little Angels Network’ of the IIT Madras Incubation Cell, she continues.