A new booking platform that connects pet owners to local pet care providers has launched in Chicago.
Co-founded by Mike Monterro, who started the restaurant-booking app Resy, and CEO Kunal Chopra, a former director of product at Groupon, Pawcare aims to make caring for your pet a little easier.
"Now we're taking on this $40 billion industry," Chopra told Chicago Inno. "You've heard of companies like OpenTable for the restaurant industry or Kayak.com that enables bookings for flights — we're doing the exact same thing for pet care."
The growing platform currently has more than 2,000 users and 35 local providers in its network and is growing 50% month-over-month in terms of usage.
"We're already in the Cook County area, and the goal is to continue to expand over the next 18 months into the broader Chicagoland area like Naperville and Elgin," Chopra said. "Our goal by the end of the year is to get 200 providers onto the platform and then eventually expand out of Chicago into other cities."
Chopra described Chicago as a "testbed site" for the platform, and he chose to launch first in the Windy City for very specific reasons.
"Chicago is a top-five pet market in the U.S. in terms of the number of households that have pets, but then also the density of providers. The supply-demand dynamics are pretty solid in Chicago," he said. "Number two, while Chicago is large, it's not a top-three pet city, so it gives us an opportunity to test and understand our product before we go to the biggest markets," he said.
Pawcare is starting in the grooming space but Chopra said that's only the company's "initial beachhead."
"Daycare boarding is next. We want to add training and those necessary pet care services into one comprehensive platform," Chopra said.
He added that the venture-funded company will look to go after seed funding early next year once Pawcare gets more traction in Chicago.
"When we opened up this pre-seed initial round, we were oversubscribed in two weeks. We're going to prove out the model in Chicago and then expand into the broader region. We're going to put a general manager in place on the ground and build out our playbook," he said.
The company's "methodical" approach to growth is one reason Chopra thinks Pawcare has been successful in fundraising now and will be in the future. He's also starting to see some improvement when it comes to fundraising for startups.
"There has been a little bit of a bounceback, and I think Q1–Q2 will be a much better state," he said.
