00:00I saw an opportunity in the pet universe six years ago when I started a daycare and a hotel for dogs.
00:12I've been in the corporate world for a long time, FMCG's mainly. I used to play tennis
00:17for a living and then I joined Unilever back in 1998 and then over the years it's been
00:24corporate, traveling, doing reports and growing the business and then I decided to... I saw an
00:30opportunity in the pet universe six years ago when I started a daycare and a hotel for dogs.
00:39Things went really well, of course, except for the couple of years where the COVID was visiting.
00:45And then the pet shop, I mean, bought a stake at Petsville. We became partners and we decided to
00:51grow the business together. Last year the new investors asked me to come and
00:58manage the pet shop, which for me is more than just a job, it's a passion. I'm one of
01:04the lucky ones who enjoy what they do. It's a lucrative segment of the market, I would say.
01:11It's one of the very few segments that are still under-invested. If you look at the
01:17segment globally, it's growing at 14.5-15 percent, which is the highest growing segment
01:24across all FMCGs. The pet segment is growing only at 25 percent, which is still very high
01:30and the highest growing compared to Europe, to the US, to Latin America, to Asia even.
01:38So the segment is under-invested, under-represented and we expect
01:43huge, huge growth in the upcoming years. One more point, if you look into the penetration
01:50of pets in the households, only eight percent of the households in the UAE have cats. Only five
01:57percent of the households in the UAE have dogs. In the US, it's 70 percent. So the opportunity is
02:05huge and looking into different industries, looking into the history, the Middle East
02:11follows and specifically in the last couple of years and the outlook for the next 10-15 years,
02:18there is a lot of investments across industries and everyone is expecting this region to boom.
02:24So what's better than having a growth segment in a growing region? We've seen a lot of
02:32humanization, I would call it, of pets. So people now take pets as part of the family, as kids,
02:38which means the spending patterns are developing. They're looking for more premium products,
02:44they're still, of course, looking for value, for money, but also they're looking for innovation.
02:49And when I say innovation, I mean daycare, I mean boarding centers. Even in some of the daycares,
02:55we run Halloween parties, we run end-of-year parties, we run back-to-school parties.
03:00So I think it's a lot of growth levers leading this industry forward, not just
03:08one. Innovation is part of it, of course, and I think there is a lot of more innovations coming to
03:15the market. Convenience is another thing. Everyone now is buying online, everyone is
03:20looking for better products. It's not only about how they treat the pet, it's how they share their
03:26lives with pets. So now you look for many, you see many requests of people looking for
03:33a beach to go with their pet. Experiences. In the store here, we allow, of course, people to come
03:38with their pets and it becomes a fun kind of trip. So it's not only about how they look
03:45and how they classify their pet, as much as it's about sharing good moments with pets.
03:52And I think part of it also was due to the change of demographics during COVID. A lot of families
03:58have left, a lot of single people have actually came to the UAE and they need companions. Dogs
04:05in looking for a home has always been an issue, not only in the UAE actually, I think the country
04:10here has done a lot on that front. During COVID, the shelters were empty. Everyone was
04:18looking for a dog, everyone was looking for companionships, and it's amazing how once they get
04:25there, I've seen so many cases of people adopting a dog during COVID, and six months later we're
04:30looking for another dog. We need a companion for our companion. And that explains how
04:38it works psychologically, and it's amazing because it's contagious also.
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