Purina Europe backs seven disruptive start-ups to drive pet care innovation in 2023

5 min read

- Since its beginning, Unleashed has been driving pet-care innovation and has helped to grow and connect the pet start-up ecosystem, providing impactful solutions for pet owners, all while being powered by the Purina Accelerator Lab.
- The 2023 Unleashed cohort, which just announced winners on the 7th March 2023, represents a range of innovative pet-tech and pet-care start-ups from across Europe, Middle East, Australia and Japan.

LONDON – 20th MARCH 2023 – Purina, Europe’s leading pet care company, has announced the 7 start-ups that will participate in the fourth cohort of its acclaimed accelerator programme, Unleashed. The programme is designed to support and propel the next generation of disruptive pet-tech and pet-care start-ups.

From pet-assistant devices to unique nose printing technology, this year’s Unleashed is showcasing best-in-class innovative services and products from across the industry. Hailing from Australia, Turkey, France, Japan and the UK, the champions will benefit from tailor-made start-up scaling packages based on their stage and need. As part of this, the winners will also gain access to agile coaching and Purina’s deep commercial insights to help drive brand visibility.

The winners will be accelerated for a period of 20 weeks by Purina Unleashed Champions and industry experts. Drawing on over 125 years of Purina history and powerful R&D capabilities, the program includes a structured and funded project of up to CHF 50,000, to help start-ups achieve pre-determined KPI’s and enable the owners meet their key business objectives.

Unleashed 2023 winners are as follows:

Bookmypet (United Arab Emirates) is a leading digital platform that connects pet parents to local service providers. (Where pets have options too!)
Dogami (France) is an accessible, mobile-first web3 game, based on lovable 3D NFT dog avatars.
Feelloo (France) is a French-made, subscription-free, connected medallion designed to help cat parents take care of their furry friends.
LampoVet (Italy) is a telemedicine portal providing specialist support for the nutritional management of chronic and recently onset diseases in cats and dogs.
Petopy (Turkey) is a digital assistant for pet parents that engages vets and pet owners with various services.
S’more (Japan) uses nose print identification technology to identify individual dogs and tie all data of the dog to their nose.
VetChip Australia VetChip is a smart animal health monitor designed to enable animals to live healthier, happier and longer lives. It performs all the functions of a standard animal ‘identity microchip’ plus so much more.

Since its inception, Unleashed has accelerated 18 start-ups, including Kibus, a home appliance which helps to cook balanced pet food based in Spain and Animoscope, a telehealth pet-care service provider in France, which empowers pet owners to make decisions based on expertise and data.

The 2023 programme, which announced winners in March, was designed to build on this success by bringing new and cutting-edge products and services to the forefront of the industry, further enriching life for pets and their owners.

Kim Bill, Head of the Purina Accelerator Lab, added: “Whilst competition this year was fierce, we are proud to be supporting these start-ups in their journey to disrupt the pet-care and pet-technology sectors, and help them achieve their business goals.

Meeting consumer pain points has become increasingly harder across a saturated pet market, however we’ve seen some really robust products that are propelling Petcare into the future.

Thank you to all of the talented business owners that entered this year’s programme.”

Satsuki Sawashima co-Founder of S’more said: “The accelerator program has given us the opportunity to take the first step toward building a society where people and pets coexist together.

We believe that by implementing the validation of the science and technology of nasal print recognition, and by improving the credibility of the industry through our partnership with Purina, we will also be able to more effectively promote stakeholder acceptance and validate our business model”.

To find out more about our 2023 winners go to: www.unleashedbypurina.com.