WHY VCS, FOUNDERS ARE SMELLING BLOOD IN PETCARE

Backed by venture funding, a new breed of clinics is reshaping pet healthcare, and the accompanying bills

- Samiksha Goel

Supertails’ veterinary clinic in Brookefield, Bengaluru, isn’t anything like your familiar, if chaotic, neighbourhood practice. The floors have a soft, anti-skid texture. The lights never hit you, and the colours are muted. When this writer walked in, two cats were sitting calmly in a green backpack carrier in the waiting area, outside a dedicated feline-consultation room.

The rationale for this design is to put pets at ease, Vineet Khanna, cofounder of Supertails, told Mint. For an animal, a clinic is an unfamiliar, overwhelming space. “They are very territorial. No pet wants to visit a clinic because their FAS—fear, anxiety, stress—is high. Fear-free principles aim at almost eliminating that,” he said.

The colours, in particular, follow a logic. “Pets cannot see beyond green and blue. If you have a very colourful clinic, it will look very good, but it will also make them anxious. So, all our clinics are built around those two colours,” Khanna explained.

Supertails isn’t the only company redrawing the look and feel of a veterinary clinic. Walk through Bengaluru’s upmarket neighbourhoods, such as Koramangala and Indiranagar, and you'll see other such centres. They sport calm colours, clean lettering, and names you wouldn’t have encountered five years ago, such as Dr Paws, Dr Doodley, and Vetic, to name just three. These clinics epitomize a big shift that is playing out across urban India: the corporatization of veterinary services.

HOW IT BEGAN

Until a few years ago, India’s petcare market was a highly fragmented affair, dominated by neighbourhood pet stores, standalone vets and a handful of product brands. That began to change during the covid pandemic, with people across India adopting companion animals.