Name: Udit Agarwal.
Info.: He's Co-Founder at Petdom, shelters and NGOS across the country. He passed out of NSIT
in 2012 with a B.E. and have worked with Fractal Analytics as a Business Analyst and with Niffler
and Helpchat as a programmer.
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| Petdom Team |
Q1. What is PetDom ?
Petdom is a pet adoption portal for individuals who want to get a pet home. We list pets from Shelters, NGOs & Individuals across the country specifically for adoption. We firmly believe that in a country like India with a huge stray dog and rescue population, people once enabled and informed about adoption, will make the right choice and not buy their pets.
Q2. Why you named it PetDom ? What does it mean ?
Petdom comes from Kingdom of Pets (so we call it Petdom). Since there are so many pets on our website, its almost like a kingdom :)
Q3. How you got the idea of building such a platform ?
We’ve had pets before and have gone through the experience of getting a pet home firsthand. It’s a very tough job and you can never be sure about the source. In todays case, we have sites like Olx which have become pages for puppy mills and unethical breeders. We hope, verifying the people on a platform could help us screen our sources better. Putting all this together, we thought we could start out with a adoption portal that aims to aggregate only the ethical sources.
Q4. How it all started ? Who all helped you out ? What is the story from ground level ?
The idea was conceived during a conversation between me and my co-founders when we were discussing how hard it is to get a pet home these days with no verifiable sources. We were working our jobs then, and took our time to do market research, understand the pet industry in India. We have been constantly helped and motivated by people already working in this domain who highlighted the need of such a platform.
On the ground level, there is a huge awareness gap for people wanting to adopt pets. They don't know where to get pets from and which pet would suit their house. I hope over time, we can understand all the problems and deal with effective strategies to deal with all of them.
Q5. what are the major roadblocks you faced ? and how you tackled them ? or how you gonna tackle them ?
We ran into a lot of inertia in the industry. It has been hard to convince shelters to use our technology because they are used to their archaic ways. We also needed to reach out to as many people because there is no awareness about where to get a pet from. We still have a long way to go before we can see the true value of Petdom in terms of both, adoption by users and the pets that get adopted.
Q6. what mistakes you made that you don't want others to repeat during your entrepreneurial journey ?
Doing adequate market research before you actually set to do any work in the industry of your choice is very important. Simple market validation ideas take you a long way and can save you valuable time. It’s very important to listen to your users and constantly make tweaks to your product to leverage the initial traction.
Q7. what change you wanted to bring using PetDom ? and have you succeeded ?
It’s a very long journey, and we haven’t even begun. Petdom will show its true value over a period of time. But from what set out to do initially, we see that people are showing a positive response to the initiative.
Q8. What you currently have on PetDom and How you gonna expand ?
Petdom is a pet adoption portal where people can look for pets to adopt around them. It’s pan India because of how the system is built. We are trying to make the adoption process more seamless. Its based on the feedback we have been receiving from our current users.
We are going to expand into giving pet owners, services and products for their pets through a subscription.
Q9. What lesson you'd like to conclude from your entire journey in petdom ?
It’s very important to remember why you started up in the first place. Over the journey, if you forget the initial values, you’ll be inviting trouble. It’s also very important to keep a cool head, because there are a lot of ups and downs.
Q10. Have you took funding or raised money ?
if so , what you gonna do with it ?
if not , Why ?
Yes, we are actively looking to raise money. It will help us sustain our operations and get external help to make our adoption process more seamless. We are also looking to expand into other pet parenting needs for our users.
Udit's Views about Developer's Interview Blog.
It’s a good interview blog from specific people. It will surely help people figure out mindsets of entrepreneurs because of the quality of the questions.
