We are publishing an interview of Mr. Chandan Singh, CEO, Kennel Pet Care.
Please tell us everything about your start-up, what does it do? What were the challenges of setting up and scale? How did you overcome them?
– Kennel Pet Care is an online pet care service provider. Kennel Pet Care aims to upgrade and consolidate the service standard of the local un-organized market. We use to get in contracts with the un-organized Pet Care players for our backend service. Our long term goal is to provide our service to each and every part of the Bangalore.
Why/ Eureka moment
Being a pet owner I had personally faced the pet care issues. There were many incidents when I faced a lot problem regarding grooming, doctor consulting and pet food products.
I discussed the issue with my friends, relatives, pet owners and he found out that these problems are been faced by almost all the pet owners.
I wanted to solve this issue and prepared a plan for it.
Issues faced while starting up/ building core-team
I discussed the idea with my hometown friends, and I decided to start working on this. Initially I thought that I would be able to manage but after several issues things got worse. That was the time when I realised that my co-founder or core-team should back one vision if you want to build a team. Then I built a team 0f 4 people where I divided the responsibilities as in Developing side, Marketing Side, Sales Side and Operations side. After 2-3 Months I started getting calls from different local vendors for backend service. There were some Vet/Pet care people who had earlier rejected the proposals several times.
Background
Chandan Singh- Bachelors in Business Management. Manipal University, department of commerce. MBA (Marketing & Sales) – Jain University, Bangalore.
Chandan is the Founder of Kennel. He is a modern thinker, he believes in making thoughts into realities. He is always ready for new opportunities and ready for challenges. Prior to this, Chandan was the Founder for Digital Dhobi which was started in Manipal University where he catered students with one step solutions by giving mobile app platform and later on he moved to Bangalore and handed over to local guy in Manipal.
Aarman is looking into the development part. He has completed his graduation from MIT, Manipal.
What have been revenue, traction and growth from date of inception till now?
– Bangalore consists of lot of societies and majority of them are working.
– The main objective to start the operations in Bangalore was to provide our service to all the working class people and all the societies which would let us in get higher market share in Bangalore. Initially we were facing difficulties in getting the official tie-up but after several rejections and corrections we finally got the contract from few vendors.
What is the one thing that sets you apart from your competitors and what’s your revenue model
– We never compromise in the service quality. We value our customers and understand the need for quality pet care.
– Because of the large volume that we generate through of website, we are able to negotiate better terms/rates with local vendors and pass them on as regular deals, discounts, Cash backs to our beloved customers.
How are you funded?
We remain a self-funded and boot-strapped venture. This together with our recent growth has successfully placed us in a position where we would soon be looking to raise our first round of funding and expand our operations to other parts of Bangalore and hopefully nation-wide soon.
How does the product. Detailed answer on the workings of the product
- Kennel gets in an official tie-up with the local market for getting veterinary doctors, pet accessories, and pet food products.
- We would be deciding before -hand the total number of tie-ups we want with local vendors based on ( area size, market size, College student quantity, quality of the service, Capacity to deliver quality and timely service at reasonable rate, etc.)
- Rates are been mutually decided. (Kennel and local vendors).
- MOU is been drafted and all the service related aspect is been mentioned with all the other clause related to service, quality check,term,liability, price, delivery time etc.
- Pickup/delivery, tagging, packaging is been provided by Kennel.
- Kennel sets their own price. Regular deals, discounts, cash-back would be provided
- Kennel does the payment to local vendors every 2 days. For B2B business we take up to 25% commission. Pickup and delivery for B2B would be providing by Kennel itself.