Rana Atheya : A Dog Lover Turned Entrepreneur

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Anurag Sinha
Feb 19, 2019   •  7 views

People have now started considering pets as their companions rather than being just pets. There is pet humanisation and premiumisation happening in India. People want to spend money on the pets but there are very less avenues available and thus, their reach remains limited. If I have to get something specific for my pet, I have to travel to some big outlet or ring the Vet, and often, it happens that I am not able to find what exactly my pet wants, a bit of inconvenience.

While internet penetration is growing, its impact not something that has left the pet industry untouched, ecommerce boom had earlier made products of all variety available online, thus products of this niche category also are now started being available online.

Looking at this market opportunity in this space and the love for pets had led Rana Atheya to launch a “Social Ecommerce Platform” for pet lovers i.e., not only selling pet stuffs but building a community.

It was his love for dogs that made the then 27-year-old Rana Atheya start a Web portal dedicated to dogs in 2007. “There are many animal lovers among us, but you don’t have a single platform where they can actually get details on animal care,” says Atheya. Atheya, an electronics engineer from MJP Rohilkhand university and an MBA from Coventry University, UK, used a major chunk of his savings of close to Rs 3 lakh in designing dogspot.in.

“When we started, the idea was not to generate to generate money. I was more interested in creating a community platform for animal lovers where people could share information about pet care,” he says. Soon hundreds of dog lovers began to visit the site everyday for information on animal food and accessories.

“We were generating revenues from ad clicks. They were just enough to keep the portal running,” says Atheya. “I wanted dogspot to be a one-stop shop for everything related to dogs and dog care,” he adds. In November 2009, he left his day job at Aircel to focus on the e-commerce part of his business. Meanwhile, his wife Vizal managed household expenditures.

“I brought in Rs 1.5 lakh from two of my friends and took a small space on lease in Gurgaon,” he says. Before, he had been operating from his home. “The response was good as I already had a customer base. I also started doing a lot of research and meeting a lot of shop owners for tie-ups,” he says.

I was commuting via the Delhi metro when I overheard an interesting conversation between two men in their 40’s. The gist of the conversation was that one of the men wanted to startup an online store as he was getting bored at his job. All he needed was someone who’d make him the site and he’d take care of everything else.

And all I could think was- “How I wish this were true.”

Coincidentally, I was on my way to the office of a thriving eCommerce store based out of Gurgaon- Dogspot.in. Founded by passionate dog lovers, Rana Atheya, Vizal Atheya and Shalesh Visen in 2007, Dogspot was initially only a place for dog lovers to connect. Their site grew in popularity and the trio got fulltime into it in 2009. They introduced technology to the dog shows across the country by automating their processes and had their foot in the doors of everything related to dogs in India. In 2011, they decided to enter eCommerce and there hasn’t been any looking back.

Raising an initial seed amount of INR 7 lakhs from families and friends, Rana started out and the early signs were encouraging. They raised some funds from a foreign investor and recently went on to raise a round from India Quotient.

DogSpot has about 3500 products listed on the site (not only dog products) and does close to a 100 deliveries a day with an average ticket size of INR 1300. Here, we’ll look at some of the inside workings about how their inventory which holds 8000 SKUs at any particular time works.

Firstly, what makes Dogspot.in special is the love of the founders for dogs and other animals. The twinkle in the eye when they talk about what they do shows a lot about how successful a venture would become. Some of the products they showed me were fascinating and so they would be for any dog owner.

Three months into the business, Dogspot got around 400 dedicated clients. Atheya’s wife joined the business. “Within six months, we got into other pet segments such as birds and cats,” he says. The turnover in the first year (2009-10) of his e-commerce operations was around Rs 10 lakh. The staff was limited to five people including Atheya and Vizal. By 2012, the portal started dealing in items for small pets such as squirrels, rabbits and hamsters. The company tied up with several logistics and transportation firms for shipping products across India.

In 2013, the company received funding of close to Rs 1 crore from an angel investor. Atheya says that Dogspot has a catalogue of around 4,000 products which includes all brands of pet food and treats, accessories, toys, grooming kits, bowls and feeders. Dogspot also provides information on animal adoptions, animal shows and details of buyers and sellers.

“We have a team of 27 and have supplied products to around 15,000 customers in 950 cities in the country. We have some 5,000 dedicated customers,” says Atheya. “In 2013-14, our turnover was around Rs 4 crore and we aim to double it to Rs 8 crore by March 2015,” he adds.

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