Startups Journey

1K

Startup

How Rukmini’s Collarfolk is creating pet friendly holiday market in India

09th, September 2017 - Startup

I started my professional career with Vodafone and over the next 7 years worked across sales and marketing with large corporates. In early 2015, I started working on CollarFolk and launched the website in Feb 2016. Since then we have emerged as a lifestyle brand loved and trusted by over 5000 pet lovers. 200 families have booked pet-friendly holidays on our portal, we have initiated Asia’s only adventure triathlon with pets and have recently launched our line of pet- inspired merchandise.

Value proposition of collarfolk

We are a lifestyle platform for pet lovers that provides credible information and high-quality products and services. We make lives of pet families more fun while keeping their convenience in mind.

The market for pet travel and how society reacted

We are helping create this market in India. It requires education on the demand as well as the supply side and therefore has its challenges. However, you tell a pet family that they can now take a holiday with their pet and you will always get a ‘wow, I have been wanting to do this forever!’

Being women entrepreneur how did your family support?

I come from a family of entrepreneurs, my dad started and successfully ran his advertising agency for over 30 years and he has been a huge inspiration. So support has never been a problem!

Emerging Market:

On the market and opportunities, the founder cites her own figure. She says that India has 12 million pet households and it is estimated that four million of these are in the top 25 cities. She estimates the size of the opportunity at Rs 650 crore per annum growing at over 20 percent. Also, given that around 80 percent of India’s e-commerce market is travel related, it is a space where Indian families feel relatively comfortable swiping their card online.

In the pet care segment, Dogspot, Petspace and Petdom are some of the known names. Besides, Pets World, Dogspot, Dogkart, Royalcanin, Petfoodsindia and many other well-established brands are catering to the pet food segment.

Earlier this year, petcare platform Dogspot raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Ratan Tata and other investors such as Ronnie Screwala, K Ganesh, and India Quotient.

Future plans and your vision?

We want to build CollarFolk as a lifestyle brand that is loved and trusted by pet lovers the world over. We intend to introduce a line of intelligent everyday products that are pet inspired, that’s the focus area for the next 24 months. Pet-friendly holidays, events for pet families and community stories will continue to build CollarFolk as a platform that makes lives of pet families more fun!

Website: CollarFolk

Facebook: CollarFolk