How Pet Tech Company Petcube Is Making Pet Parenting More Accessible To Every Human - Forbes

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Longtime readers of this column should recall my prior coverage of pet tech company Halo Collar. The company, founded by brothers Ken and Michael Ehrman, are makers of a internet-connected dog collar that, with help from a complementary smartphone app, makes watching one’s dog(s) more accessible by creating a virtual fence around their location. The impetus for Halo Collar came from a place of accessibility, since the brothers’ mother is elderly and isn’t capable of chasing after her dogs should they get loose in the neighborhood. Thus, the device’s reliance on a geofence allows her to give her pups freedom off-leash while still being able to track them without any physical exertion. At a high level, this makes products like the Halo Collar assistive technology because it enables people to care for their pet(s) more accessibly. This can be particularly profound for someone with a guide dog; the dog needs to be properly taken care of so it can properly take care of its human. A device like the Halo Collar makes doing so that much easier on both parties.

What’s true for Halo Collar is also true for the team at Petcube.

“Pets are family and you take care of your family, right? [The] $100 billion US market says so. It’s not a hobby or a gimmick. It’s a necessity. That’s why this market has always been recession-proof,” Andrey Klen, one of Petcube’s founders, said to me late last month about his company’s ethos in an interview conducted over email. “Millennials are not in a rush to have kids—they channel that love and care towards animals. Empty nesters tend to raise pets when their kids are out of the house. Sometimes we care about pets more than we care about humans. We’d love to get better at it; naturally, we want to be better pet parents just as we strive to excel for our human kids. Technology helps that.”

At a high level, both the Halo Collar and Petcube aspire to the same goal: to leverage Wi-Fi and cellular positioning to track one’s pet. Klen, who’s based out of Kyiv, Ukraine and poignantly described himself as focusing on product launches as the “devastation of air bombs” decimate his city, explained Petcube has been in existence for 12 years and are the originators of the connected pet category. He told me despite the technology industry’s breakneck advancements, pet tech historically has lagged behind. Klen and team endeavored to do something about it in an effort to make pet parenting easier and more accessible. The company’s whole modus operandi, Klen told me, is to connect pets to the internet and give them a voice. Petcube has 60 employees spread all over the world, from California to China, with Klen’s home base in Ukraine acting as what he characterized as a “big hub.” For Klen, who’s been a pet parent since childhood, the presence of his dog Pablo plays an instrumental role in “[keeping] my sanity afloat and my empathy surging” as the city around him literally burns on a daily basis.

Like my conversations with the Ehrman brothers, Klen said it’s important Petcube put dogs on the map because millions of them go missing in the United States every year. He likened the Petcube device to a cellphone that utilizes mobile networks to pinpoint the precise location of a dog and store that data, even going so far as creating heat maps and providing information such as steps walked and calories burned. Petcube’s product communicates directly with cell towers, enabling owners to set up geofences and get notifications if and when their pups decide to wander away. In terms of hardware, the device is rated IP67 for durability and water resistance and the battery lasts up to a month when in power-save mode. The tracker, nestled into a fluorescent silicone case that easily affixes to collars and harnesses, features LED lights for low-light situations at nighttime, as well as an audible beeper for training.

“You can’t put a price tag on peace of mind,” Klen said of Petcube’s value proposition. “People worry when they hear harrowing stories about pets getting lost, so it’s only natural to invest in safety. Petcube’s interactive cameras serve the same purpose but for home environments. With the tracker, we are stepping out into the wild [so] it’s a rational step in our evolution of building a connected ecosystem of devices.”

When asked about customer feedback, Klen alluded to the multi-billion dollar pet tech market by telling me people are “thrilled” by Petcube and are very responsive when it comes to providing insight. He called feedback very important, saying the company now has an “extensive backlog” of software features mostly rooted in health data around a pet’s activity. Such information can help guide future research and development and new innovations in Petcube’s niche in the industry.

Looking towards the future, Klen said succinctly Petcube is working to build “a destination app.” They want to be the singular platform for addressing all the needs of one’s pet. The company has eyes on expanding its current lineup of hardware, building devices that add more functionality yo solve more problems. As mentioned previously, the data collected not only helps Petcube in its R&D efforts, but also obviously helps keep pet parents more abreast of their pets’ activities and overall wellbeing. All told, Klen said to me, the work he and Petcube are doing hopefully will someday result in pets really having a voice of their own.

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