Guiavet attracts Astella with veterinary telemedicine platform

If the pandemic showed the potential of telemedicine, digitization is now starting to arrive in the care of pets. Guiavet has just received a pre-seed of BRL 6.5 million from Astella to leverage a remote veterinary care platform, recently authorized by regulation. Angel investors such as Claudio Gandelman, CEO of DeliRec, and Strider co-founders Luiz Tângari and Carlos Gonçalves also participated in the round.

“Our platform ends up being a marketplace of services and products in an integrated and personalized way. Tutors come to us with their needs and it all starts with an orientation”, says Gabriela Mendes, co-founder of Guiavet. By recording pet data, the platform generates indicators and alerts, such as vaccine and deworming reminders.

With the pre-seed round, Guiavet will invest in go-to-market strategies for the veterinary telemedicine business. Last week, the Federal Council of Veterinary Medicine approved a resolution to define parameters for this clinical care, which until then was not allowed – and, with that, the startup was focused on educational content and other services.

The platform will work with subscription and single service for video consultations. For pet shops and service providers, a transaction fee is charged. “When the pet leaves the clinic, the establishment is no longer able to offer various products and services. With the platform, it is possible to stop being reactive to demand”, says Gabriela.

For now, the platform has accepted registrations throughout Brazil, but has not yet been able to map clinics, hospitals and other providers outside of Belo Horizonte, where it is based. In operation since November and only a month ago charging for the service, the startup currently has 9,000 registered tutors.

The addressable market is not small. According to the Brazilian Association of the Pet Products Industry (Abinpet), there are currently more than 140 million pets in Brazil. This places the country in second place among the largest pet markets in the world. A survey by Instituto Pet Brasil shows that, in 2021, the pet sector exceeded R$ 50 billion in revenue in the country for the first time.

Daughter of a veterinarian, Gabriela realized her mother’s difficulties in providing service during the pandemic and combined her expertise in developing digital products, acquired through her training in design, with her passion for entrepreneurship. In 2013, she helped found Strider, an agricultural input management company, which was later acquired by Syngenta. She then invited her longtime friend, and now partner and co-founder, Filipe Miranda, to get the idea off the ground.

So far, Guiavet has operated with R$ 500 thousand of its own capital. Now, it adds not only more funding, but also the know-how of the new partners to the operation. “I had already been talking to several funds and followed Edson Rigonatti, a partner at Astella, because he admired their content and their pioneering spirit. From the first conversation, we saw that they add more than just the contribution, it’s smart money”, she says.

Astella invests in early stage, pre-seed or seed startups. “We had not yet invested in the pet market, but we think that there is a very relevant thesis, which is the disaggregation of social networks. Basically, people are leaving Google and Facebook and Instagram and going to specific places that offer what they like,” says Rigonatti.

Source: Value Pipeline