India's pet care industry is growing at a CAGR of 16.5%, according to Decipher Market Research Agency, with the market size expected to reach $1,932.6 million by 2030. Heads Up For Tails (HUFT), an omnichannel pet care brand founded in 2008, sits right in the midst of this exploding industry.

In recent years, a significant shift has been underway in the world of pet ownership. No longer are pets simply regarded as companions, but rather, they have assumed a more central role in consumers’ lives as cherished family members. This transformation is reflected in the evolving terminology used to describe the relationship with pets. The concept of "pet ownership" has gradually given way to the more encompassing and emotionally charged term, "pet parenting".

In a conversation with exchange4media, Samriddh Dasgupta, CMO, Heads Up For Tails highlighted how the family structure in India has undergone a change over the years. “Families now go beyond the normative construct of the 80s and 90s, which has resulted in a lot of people finding a very strong sense of maternal/paternal instinct when the pets come home,” he mentioned.

This also means that the ‘parents’ are no longer dependent on the biological child of being a determinant of them being a parent. “The entire role of parenting has evolved and pets have become an important part of that evolution,” Dasgupta said.

What does this shift mean from a consumer trends perspective?

Dasgupta highlighted that when a shift is happening from ownership to parenting, it is more like becoming a caregiver than having a power-play. “You then become fundamentally obsessive about nurturing whom you are supposed to take care of. It is about doing the best that you can, and when it is about that, the product and service demands are equally higher,” he explained.

The lack of pet products and services and an increased demand for the same, owing to the high pet population still remains a gap across the country. The brand has been on a journey of increasing the footprint of its experience centres, across cities, especially with a focus on satellite cities where the pet population is higher.

Pet parents essentially want their lifestyle and behaviour to reflect in their pets. A role reversal has happened wherein it's no more about getting a dog to protect the house but how can the parent do everything to protect the dog?

Dasgupta shares that decisions about the pet’s food, treats, toys and almost every other aspect of their lifestyle are being taken with a lot of deliberation.

“People want more sustainable, non-toxic solutions. We are seeing a very strong trend in people’s choice of food for their pets. They want ready-to-eat products, meals that are far more nutritionally rich as opposed to what is potentially available in the market. Consumers also want products that aid a better life, in the form of supplements. They are ready to pay a small premium, but do not want to compromise on the quality,” he said.

The Petcare Premiumisation

Premiumisation has off late started happening across industries be it beauty and skincare or chocolates and confectionery. Consumers are demanding better quality and better value.

However, Dasgupta pointed out that when it comes to the pet care industry, it was built on the back of premiumisation and specialisation.

“Over the last 7-8 years, India’s manufacturing and R&D capacity in the pet care sector has gotten better. There is far more investment in making sure that there is a product line that is better than what it was about a decade ago,” he said.

Hence, it’s a given that since the cost of production has gone up, there is a premium that will be demanded. “Consumers are well aware of it. The difference in quality is extremely visible. I think because of the ‘high visible quality delta’ of a brand that is trying to bring premium quality products in return for a nominal premium in cost, that is where the sweet spot in the market is,” Dasgupta explained.

He says that premiumisation in quality has happened, which is an exponential perk whereas premiumisation in cost is an incremental perk.

Omnichannel Philosophy

HUFT started off with offline stores and very recently embraced an omnichannel approach by going big on digital strategy as well.

“Our offline stores are not traditionally designed as extremely high-selling points. The philosophy behind the stores is to be a counselling point or an experience point. There’s also a service part of the business which you cannot do online, and is a strong enabler,” Dasgupta shared.

He added that the online component came in after multiple requests. “We were selling on marketplaces, but our customers needed far more depth of content; they needed us to run a loyalty or reward program, etc. So the online business came on the back of consumer demand,” Dasgupta said.

HUFT’s online business kicked off around 4-5 years ago, and the business sees a 60-40 ratio between the offline and online channels, respectively.

The brand also has its app, which according to Dasgupta, sees a much higher retention rate than the website.

Even though people across every demographic have had pets, for the longest period, pet care as a sector had significance majorly in the urban or tier 1 cities. Tier 1 cities, for HUFT, form the volume and the value. “Clearly the demand is oriented towards tier 1,” Dasgupta shared.

However, delving deeper, he mentioned that there has been a shift since Covid. After the first wave of Covid, a lot of people moved back home. Hybrid and online jobs came in, and people who were living in a metro but hailed from smaller towns, moved back.

But their desire for those quality products still remained. “They were already experienced with those products from Heads Up For Tails when they were staying in larger cities. Hence the desire remained, so we are serving the same consumers in remote regions as well,” he mentioned.

Dasgupta shared that HUFT is seeing increasing consumer demands from remote parts of the country, starting from northeast to remote areas of southern India as well.

The brand has over 80 offline stores right now, of which 20-25% of stores are in smaller markets (in terms of market population). “We are going to open around 10-15 more in slightly smaller areas,” Dasgupta mentioned.

The Challenges

While there are perks to having a presence across channels, the challenges do not shy away. From technology integration to data management and even maintaining consistency in customer experience, it becomes a difficult task for brands to ensure a seamless transition.

HUFT faced organisational challenges while on its transition journey towards the omnichannel route. “Suddenly things are not just about one channel, but about multiple channels. Now each channel would have to compete with the other because there’s an incentive to do so,” Dasgupta said.

Another challenge was to have a unified experience across the channels. He explained, “You don’t want someone to come to the website and not be able to get the depth of content that he would get at retail.”

Logistics and distribution of resources were some more challenges along the way, Dasgupta shared.

Decoding The Tech Stack

For brands operating on an omnichannel model, there always lies a technology layer that needs to interplay between digital assets and offline assets, along with warehousing, marketing and measurability.

HUFT cracked the code to an ideal tech stack early on, which generally tends to become a massive challenge for brands cross-sector.

“Our tech stack is not an off-the-rack thing. We deeply customised it, there’s no one in India who built tech stacks specifically for pet care,” shared Dasgupta.

The brand’s app is a very mature component in the tech stack, where there is a significant amount of the ecosystem’s interplay that happens between the different functional tech stacks that have been put together.

“The market play comes on top of what we see across as consumer behaviour. Being omnichannel, our ability to reach out to you at the time of purchase or search is fairly strong. We have built this with Clevertap,” Dasgupta said.

Since there was no tech solution provider, particularly for pet care in India, HUFT got its tech stack customised, which is quite robust in nature. Dasgupta pointed out that when one looks at traditional CDPs, they find components like age, gender, address, phone number, etc., the standard ones.

“But when you look at a pet parent, you have a phone number with multiple pet parents linked to it. If you and your partner come to the store, both will be linked to the pet, you might have multiple pets. Look at the number of variable consumer fields that are linked back up to the CDP. I think that is something we have been able to manage fairly well,” he explained.