When you go on vacation, try to be careful when choosing the place where you will stay and evaluate everything, not just the price. Check the comments of other guests, the ratings of the site, the activities to perform. However, if you have pets, one detail remains: “with whom do I leave the dog?”
DogHero is a platform where you can check places to leave your dog with the same care you choose the place where you will stay. You could say it’s an Airbnb for dogs.
On their web platform, you can search for hosts that can receive your dog. The page includes details of the hosts, such as photos of the residence, dogs that were previously there and customer evaluations.
After choosing a host, you establish contact with him from the app’s chat or on the same DogHero website. The reservation and payment are also from the same application. When you host your pet, you bring their food and toys with them.
In the end, you stay calm. Your pet’s host will send you photos and videos, so you can be sure that it enjoys the holidays as well as you.
DogHero also includes a veterinary guarantee of up to 15,000 pesos. The host receives 75% of the rate. DogHero also offers online training in the “School of Heroes.”
A market bigger than babies
The Brazilians Eduardo Baer and Fernando Gadotti are responsible for DogHero creation. The entrepreneurs met in an MBA from Standford. These two partners, lovers of dogs, founded the company in 2014.
In Brazil, DogHero has 15K hosts, 250 walkers and has a presence in 650 cities. In Argentina, 1K houses host pets in 100 cities. Moreover, in Mexico, where it arrived in 2018, it already has 250 homes in 20 cities, but its goal is to reach 1,5K hosts by the end of this year.
The pet market is more significant than you can imagine. Only in Mexico, has already exceeded the baby market, which speaks of a crucial generational change in consumer habits. Just in food, was invoiced $2 thousand 78 million, 112% more than the $980 million recorded in processed foods for babies (baby food and milk formulas) in the same period.
Eduardo Baer commented on this for Entrepreneur, “People can underestimate this market, but we have seen how it has evolved. Today there are already 100 million dogs in Latin America, which are part of their families and have an expectation of the higher quality of life and services.”
More investment for pets
Rover and IGNIA Partners have bet on the growth of DogHero for the coming years. This startup got an investment of 7 million dollars recently. Álvaro Rodríguez Arregui, co-founder and partner of IGNIA Partners, pointed out that “DogHero is one of the great protagonists in the ecosystem of the collaborative economy in Latam, its work team and effective growth strategies are two of its great attributes.”
For his part, Baer said that “with this investment, we want, de facto, to consolidate as the leading Latin American player not only in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico but in more countries in the region, because by 2020 we will reach Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Uruguay. “
The money from the investment will go to the areas of Technology and product development (30%), Marketing (30%), Human resources (20%). Also, they will begin with the DogWalk service in Mexico and Argentina during 2019 (20%). The purpose is to monopolize the market of more than 100 million dogs in Latin America.
“We want to provide more solutions for parents and moms of dogs, while we work on improving the current experience. That is what drives us, and this new investment helps us to do it faster, “said Baer.
The founders of DogHero expect double growth in Brazil, five times more in Argentina and seven times more in Mexico than in the same periods of 2018. Ricardo Plaschinski will be the Country Manager of the startup in Mexico to achieve this goal.
“Mexico has proven to be a key country for DogHero because, in the 11 months of operation, we have done twice as many services as they did in Brazil in that period,” he said.
The local team in Mexico will be reinforced to attract new talent and expand in such a way that they have a host for each municipality of the country.
In addition to this recent investment, DogHero has received more than $12 million from investors such as Kaszek Ventures (Argentina) and Monashees (Brazil), as well as Global Founders Capital (Germany).