thePack.in emerges as India’s fastest-growing pet parenting resource

Our Mission Begins

We started building thePack.in in 2020 with the goal of spreading education and awareness amongst Indian pet parents on how to raise dogs at home. As pet parents ourselves, we had gone through several challenges with our dogs. Simple skills like toilet training, stopping our puppy’s biting, and walking our dogs on a leash without being pulled were a constant struggle. Concepts like socialization, separation training, and a balanced diet were completely alien to us. This lack of knowledge severely reduced the quality of life that we shared with our dogs. When we realized that we weren’t the only ones, we knew that we had to do something about it.

The Challenges Faced by Indian Pet Parents

More than 70% of pet parents in India are first-time pet parents, having no prior experience raising a dog by themselves. Seeking guidance on this journey from family members or friends was challenging, given their general lack of awareness or expertise in raising happy and healthy dogs. Consulting a veterinarian or canine trainer for every issue can prove to be expensive for an average parent. While Google or YouTube are accessible sources of information, much of the content is created in the US or Europe, with limited applicability in the Indian context.

In effect, Indian pet parents have no one to turn to when they need help and it can be quite overwhelming – we know this from having been in such situations ourselves. We strongly believe that lack of education and awareness is one of the topmost contributing factors to India’s abandonment rate being 50%, the highest in the world (source). We were appalled by the situation and knew we had to do something to fix it, and so began our mission called thePack.in.

Attracting India’s Top Pet Experts

We knew that our first step had to be attracting India’s best pet experts to work with us. After months of speaking to and reaching out to experts in the industry, we were fortunate enough to find a few including Shivani Kuthe (certified dog trainer & behaviorist) and Dr. Tanaya Pai (internationally qualified veterinarian).

Online Consultations: Our Initial Approach

Initially, our focus was on providing online help to dog parents in need. This was back in 2021 when everyone was still in lockdown and had become comfortable with platforms like Zoom or Google Meet. We felt that online classes and one-on-one consultations would help parents under lockdown, who would have otherwise preferred in-person help, in a normal world.

The response was quite positive; parents loved how easily they could connect with some of India’s top experts, even in a lockdown. However, we realized over time that this model was not scalable – the pricing for our sessions was too high and more than 90% of pet parents were still unaware that their problems could be solved through expert intervention. For instance, we came across stories of parents who had not traveled for years after getting a dog. Why? Because their dog suffered from separation anxiety and would howl all day and night if left alone. Parents assumed this to be normal dog behavior and gave up on vacations entirely, for fear of getting scolded by neighbors. How do you convince such parents that their problem can be solved, when they don’t even know that they have a problem?

thePack.in Library: Reaching Parents Where They Search

We had to reach people through a more accessible channel, and this is why we started thePack.in library in 2022. Through multiple parent conversations, we learned that many parents, especially in the ages of 25-40, were googling their pet parenting issues. We thought building a library of expert-created content on our website would help target such parents with practical solutions that were much better than the Westernized articles currently on the web. This new project was led by our team member Shivani Kuthe, who has done her Masters in English Literature from Christ University, apart from being a certified dog behaviorist.

A Team of Experts

We started off by writing articles on basic dog training and behavior, then Dr. Tanaya pitched in with medical and health-related topics. Finally, canine Nutritionist Arpita Thakur joined us in 2023 to research and publish articles on diet and nutrition, a growing concern amongst pet families.

Expanding the Library and Collaborating with Pet Parents

Since then we have published nearly 200 articles, each carefully written by top dog experts including Namratha Rao, Garima Tomar, Sayli Rajadhyaksha, Alisha Krishnayya and Sabine Tietge, all of whom are highly qualified behaviorists with decades of experience working with dogs. Each article goes through a diligent vetting process by team members as well as a pet parent advisory board, who we lovingly call the mentors of thePack. This ensures that each article is well-researched and grounded in pet parenting reality.

We have also published articles in collaboration with our parent mentors, who write in subject areas that they are experienced in such as:

• Pet Laws in India (Mridula Iyenger, pet parent and lawyer)
• Easy and healthy dog food recipes for parents to try at home (Neha Mitra and Tara Sundaram, pet parents and home chefs)…and others.

Improving Accessibility Through SEO

But writing alone was not enough; we wanted to ensure that these articles also reached pet parents when they googled their problems. For the past year and a half, we have worked hard on improving thePack.in library’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO), learning so much along the way. The focused efforts of our tech team, Ram Prashanth (Full Stack Developer) and Prarthana Seshadri (Designer at thePack.in), along with Shivani, have helped us build a platform that is now easily accessible and convenient to read.

Success and Recognition

Today, our library boasts a monthly readership of 5000+ pet parents from all parts of the country. We believe that we are the biggest library of pet parenting resources in India, in terms of both readership and volume of content. Getting backlinks to our articles from reputed publishers such as Conde Nast Traveller and The Print, among others, is a validation of the authenticity of our content and the reputation of our library.

Our Ambitious Goals for a Pet-Inclusive India

We are only getting started. Our aim this year is to reach more than 1 lakh+ pet parents and help them through thePack.in library. Our bigger goal is to reach every single pet parent in India by 2030, which would mean an annual readership of over 10 crore pet parents per year. It is an ambitious goal, but we are passionate and believe we are on the right track. We want to make India one of the most pet-inclusive nations in the world, which is only possible if each and every pet parent knows how to raise happy dogs at home.