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If you have a pet, you will no doubt have come across one of Mars Petcare’s brands – Pedigree, Whiskas, Iams, Royal Canin, and many others – it is the biggest company in a global petcare market which, depending on what figures you look at, stood at around $250bn last year and is en-route to nearly half a trillion over the next decade.
On top of that, factors like the pandemic have meant that now, nearly half of all pet owners are first-time owners, and people – especially younger people – are increasingly saying that their pets are the most important things in their lives. All this adds up to a massive opportunity.
My guest today is Rachel Sheppard, director of ventures at Mars Petcare, where she’s responsible for early-stage investing though the Leap Ventures Studio, the accelerator programme Mars Petcare runs in partnership with the Michelson Found Animals Foundation and R/GA Ventures, as well as the Leap Venture Acadamy, the even earlier-stage programme focused on diverse founders in the space.
When people think petcare they tend to think, as Sheppard points out, of food and accessories, but it’s so much more than that. Software, data management, hospital efficiency, diagnostics and therapeutics all fall into petcare, and the sector is increasingly bringing in more technologies and elements from other markets and applying them to taking care of our animals in this massive market where solutions that exist elsewhere can find new avenues to grow.