Stuck at work doing overtime, and not able to get home to feed your pet? No need to worry, just pick up your smartphone and at the press of a button you’re able to dispense food from SinglePet’s hardware at home. The service even allows pets and their owners to interact through a live video stream direct to a mobile handset, whenever and wherever they are so that you easily can check up on your pet at anytime.
Pet ownership, particularly among single people, is increasing rapidly. But with hectic work schedules it is often difficult to balance looking after a pet and fulfilling one’s work requirements. SinglePet combines a robotic pet care solution with a mobile application, which enables pet owners to take care of their animals at home regardless of how busy their work/social lives are. Singlepet uses M2M/loT technology through a smartphone app, which allows users to easily interact with their animals in real time, as well as providing a mobile interface for taking care of their pets (feeding, medicating, and watering).Pet owners can also purchase pet food within the SinglePet app, a convenience that could be a future revenue stream for the company.
SinglePet claims that the Korean pet industry is worth $1.8 billion and is expected to reach $5.4 billion in 2016 and that the Japanese and The US market is worth 7 and 10 times that, respectively. A rise in the amount of pets in the US and increased spending per pet are the main factors that will contribute to the pet industry’s growth in the years ahead. As the recovery from recent economic turmoil takes hold, household disposable income will rise and spending on pets will pick up even more, making the pet industry an attractive arena to enter for smart companies like SinglePet. SinglePetis expecting to start mass production later this year.
Going global
SinglePet recently accompanied beSUCCESS to Singapore as one of ten Korean startups that won the chance through the ‘K-APP Global Hub Program’ to go to Singapore for an intensive week of seminars, business matching and networking. “The first objective we had with our trip to Singapore was to secure funding from global investors who could help us in our quest to go global”, CEO Jhon Park said. SinglePet is going all in by targeting the Japanese and US marketfirst to achieve domination in this largely untapped market. ”We have met potential investors and partners in several countries, such as Japan, USA, Singapore and Taiwan and the trip was a huge success. We realized that even though we’re just a small Korean startup, it’s possible to succeed in the global market. We are now preparing our global market strategy and we can't wait to see the future!”, Lynn Jeon at SinglePet said.
More about this article series
The KAPP article series will cover each of the 20 startups that took part in the KAPP Global Hub Program, which took Korean startups to two global startuphubs, and is followed with a series of targeted workshops to ensure that the relationships and experience gained during the overseas trips was fully leveraged. 10 startups went to Singapore to discover the South East Asian markets, build partner relationships and gain investment for global growth. The other 10 companies went to Israel to engage with, and learn from, experts in one of the World’s most prolific high-tech centres.
