Online pet-health marketplace Vetster's rise fuelled by telehealth boom during pandemic
As a busy CEO, Mark Bordo would often find it difficult to make it to vet appointments for his dog, a 13-year-old cockapoo named Riley.
He would receive health updates over the phone, but the rushed follow-up calls after appointments were already over made him feel like he wasn't as engaged as he could be in her care.
The experience led him to cofound Vetster, an online marketplace that connects pet owners with vets for appointments over video chat.
Vets from anywhere in North America can register for the platform and begin taking appointments, setting their own rates and schedules. Since it first began signing up customers in September 2020, Vetster has grown to roughly 3,000 vets and 5,000 patients in the continent, figures that Bordo said are growing rapidly.
“Veterinarians were so enthusiastic about joining our platform that we had to start to throttle the registration and only allow a certain number of veterinarians on,” said Bordo, Vetster's co-founder and CEO. “We pretty quickly blew away our forecast by about 250 per cent of what we expected to have on the supply side in all of 2020.”
Vetster offers around-the-clock vet appointments for cats and dogs, in addition to rabbits, horses and reptiles including turtles.
Most of the platform's vets use it to supplement their existing practice, but some are starting to use Vetster for almost full-time work, Bordo said.
The average appointment on Vetster lasts between 15 and 30 minutes and costs $70, Bordo said, adding that the price transparency gives his service an edge over traditional clinics. “As you go into a vet, you don't really know what that bill is going to look like when you come out,” he said.
“This is a very different experience where you pay up front, so you know exactly what the cost of this is going to be.”
The Toronto-based company announced a $12.25-million Series A in May to further develop its platform and market to more potential users in other countries.
The funding round was led by Whitecap Venture Partners and Brightspark Ventures, with participation from angel investors including Wealthsimple CEO Michael Katchen.
Vetster now has around 35 employees, and plans to hire more with the additional cash.
Bordo and Vetster's other co-founder, CTO Regan Johnson, previously worked together at Canadastays, an online marketplace for vacation rentals that Bordo launched in 2008 and was sold to Expedia Group in 2019.
Bordo also started the Home Renovation Guide, a service that matched contractors and homeowners, and sold that company in 2007.
“I am always excited to support ambitious Canadian founders, and Mark is one of them,” Katchen said in an email to The Logic.
“I've known him a long time and I'm excited to see what comes next as Mark and his team work to advance virtual pet care.”
The pet company's rise comes as demand for telehealth services has been especially high amid widespread stay-at-home orders over the last year. That has led to a windfall for Canadian telehealth companies like Montreal-based Dialogue, which went public in March and now has a market capitalization of nearly $800 million. Cloudmd and Well Health, both based in Vancouver, have also seen their share prices rise substantially since the pandemic began.
Another pandemic-propelled industry is pet care, as people under lockdown have sought out companionship. Prices for dogs have increased sharply and some animal shelters' rates of adoption have roughly doubled from pre-pandemic levels.
As a result of the trend, some vets have seen backlogs, leading to long delays for appointments.
The Proshares Pet Care ETF, which tracks the performance of a group of pet stocks, has nearly doubled since last March. In Canada, Markham, Ont.-based Pet Valu filed a preliminary prospectus to go public on the Toronto Stock Exchange last week, looking to raise $275 million in its IPO.
Still, Bordo said the pet-care industry was moving toward telehealth even before the pandemic.
“This was a concept that was conceived PRE-COVID,” Bordo said. “All COVID did for telehealth — human and pet — was accelerate it. We were absolutely heading down this path.”
A number of telehealth options already exist for pet owners in North America, including U.s.-based Airvet and Chewy.
Bordo said Vester is differentiated by its marketplace, which allows customers to choose from a wide range of vets at different price points.
Almost all of Vetster's appointments are able to be resolved over the phone, Bordo said. In some cases, vets may refer patients for an in-person appointment at a local clinic. The company hopes to eventually increase the types of appointments that can be completed over the phone, as technology and hardware improve for conducting procedures like X-rays or blood tests remotely.
Still, Bordo said the platform is a way for owners not just to get diagnoses on their pets' health issues, but also expert advice on general wellness. For example, a patient could book an appointment on Vetster to ask about what pet food they should be buying, or whether they should change how they care for their pet as it ages.
“There are those moments where you don't know if something's wrong with your dog, or you just hope that it passes, because you don't want to go to the vet — because it's a hassle to get there, you don't have time, you don't know what the bill is gonna look like, you may not have a vet, you may have moved away, you may be travelling,” Bordo said.
“And so you hope the problem just resolves itself. But now we've made it so affordable, convenient, efficient, just to go and have that issue checked out.”