CED Tech Venture profile: Petrics, an app, system for better pet healthcare

For pet lovers, managing the healthcare needs of our dogs, cats, birds – whatever – can be challenging and time consuming.

A Wilmington startup, Petrics, feels our pain. Their app helps you deal with it.

Its business is designed to make pet healthcare better – and easier. Petrics is among the presenting startups at the CED Tech Venture 2016 conference.

“Our core product, the Petrics feeding system, it is an internet of things pet product and is the first selective smart bowl, meaning it prevents pets from eating each other’s food by granting access to the selected pet while also tracking their eating behavior and health data,” says CEO Edward Hall.

Here’s a Q&A profile of Petrics, the 27th in a series presented through a partnership between WRAL TechWire and the CED:

What is the focus of your business?

To provide elegant and sophisticated technology-based products that simplify pet owners’ ability to keep their pets healthy, so they can love them longer. We are a pet healthcare automation company.

What is the top pain point/business application you are seeking to address?

To make veterinary recommendation compliance easy and automated to effectively manage pet diets, reduce the US pet obesity epidemic, prevent pets from eating each other’s food, reduce risk of Gastric Dilation Volvulus (bloat), and overall make pet owners more informed and empowered to be the best pet owners they can be.

What makes it unique?

Our core product, the Petrics feeding system, it is an internet of things pet product and is the first selective smart bowl, meaning it prevents pets from eating each other’s food by granting access to the selected pet while also tracking their eating behavior and health data. When the assigned pet approaches the bowl, it opens for that pet allowing them to eat. When they walk away, it prevents pets from eating their remaining food, great for those animals that graze. We also have an auto-feeder module that you can mount to the smart bowl, turning it into a smart auto-feeder. This is the first system with this type of modularity, allowing for wet-food and dry-food users to benefit from our system.

Why should investors be interested in your firm?

Pet technology was recently announced at the 2016 Global Pet Expo as one of the top trends in the industry. Pet technology is expected to grow significantly and right now, there are no major players dominating the space. In fact, Mars Petcare recently acquired Whistle, the dog activity and GPS collar company, for $100 million April 1st. The overall industry is over $62 billion annually, and over $40 billion is spent on cats and dogs where pet owners spend up to $2.5 billion just on holiday gifts for their pets. This is the right time to invest in pet technology. This space in the pet industry is new, growing, has no major players taking up significant market share, and is drawing much attention to major companies looking to acquire value added technologies in pet healthcare and data collection.

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