Mad Paws is a Sydney-based start-up known for revolutionizing the pet accommodation and pet boarding market. Mad Paws connects pet owners with local pet sitters through a safe platform.
There are thousands of Aussies opting for Mad Paws because it is good for their community, booking guarantees, and quick online payments. You can also get a free insurance policy from Mad Paws. Pet owners using Mad Paws are aware that their pets are getting the best available personal care from their trusted neighborhoods. There are no kennels or cages on-site.
Let’s take a closer look at the Mad Paws business model and how they achieved these stunning results for their business online.
The Mad Paws founder, in an interview, said, the earlier days were tough as he had to juggle with technical challenges of developing a viable online product and having to handle all the customer support personally.
Although there were personal difficulties, he was able to learn what the customers liked even when their website was in terrible shape. He also learned what they hated. They pushed through and reached a level where they were in good shape and capable of raising a large round of funding. This was because they were able to display that their business was growing quickly and also able to display this fact with sustainable metrics.
Now Mad Paws has more than 3,00,000 pets that are registered on the platform with more than 15,000 approved pet sitters. These pet sitters have to go through a stringent vetting procedure and the business has gone through more than 55,000 applications in the process.
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Growth of Mad Paws
Mad Paws is a game-changing market leader that expanded quickly. In the recent past, Mad Paws developed a trusted partnership with businesses such as Australia Airlines Qantas. To continue growth, Mad Paws opted for digital marketing. It collaborated with OMG for hyper-targeted SEO services that resulted in catapulting their website and it also raised their revenues to another height.
Mad Paws’ approach to digital marketing
For achieving digital domination in this competitive space Mad Paws required an SEO strategy that was tailored to achieve their goals. They developed a campaign that was designed to boost their search engine visibility, improve their ranking, and multiply their conversions. They performed comprehensive keyword and competitor research for aligning the Mad Paws with the best keyword opportunities. They also performed onsite audits and technical SEO for more effective and efficient optimization.
There was a customized content strategy, used for establishing the maker-leader status of Mad Paws to dominate their long-tail opportunity. Mad Paws’ digital marketing team performs strategic link-building activities for boosting their website authority and improving their search engine visibility.
Funding from Qantas
Qantas was among the many investors that poured money into the $5 million funding round received by Mad Paws. The online marketplace for pet services had the plans to become a go-to website for all the animal owners that were looking to get services such as pet grooming, training, sitting and dog walking.
Qantas believed that Mad Paws was an excellent investment option because almost a two third of their customers were pet owners and they needed to locate the right care for their animals as it was a significant part of their traveling plans.
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Other Investors
Mad Paws was founded by a Sydney sider from Belgium called Alexis Soulopoulos. He founded the organization with the FlreHR co-founder Jan Pacas, Rolf Weber, and Marley Spoon. Other founders that participated in the venture were ParcelPush co-founder Bjorn Behrendt and Sellable MD Justus Hammer.
Apart from Qantas, this funding round was backed by other investors such as Airtasker co-founder Tim Fung, MacDoch Ventures, and Microequities Venture Capital. Mad Paws was 3 and a half years old at that stage and Soulopoulos said that he got motivated to begin this business after he had to pet sit a friend’s Labrador.
Mad Paws Revenue Model
Apart from offering their main overnight pet-sitting services, this platform can be used by people to find dog walkers or those willing to make home visits. The money the company raised through their efforts was utilized by the technology team of the company, which upgraded its mobile app significantly. Their initial app was for testing the waters.
That is how they began investing in daily interactions between pet owners and pet sitters. There were photo updates and you can also track where the dog is taking a walk. You also get a chat functionality that allows you to exchange updates. There is also a pet sitter’s pool and they have a customer support procedure and they are constantly looking to get in more staff.
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As far as the Mad Paws business model marketplace is concerned, the pet sitters are responsible for setting their price and the owners can select a pet sitter that is suitable to them. Mad Paws makes its revenues by taking a fifteen to twenty percent fee from these pet sitters after every booking. They also charge a small booking fee to the pet owners.
Things started looking good when Mad Paws combined their technology with trust. There are thousands of pet owners in the Mad Paws database and good communication has always been at the heart of the company. If you are looking to develop a pet service marketplace like Mad Paws, get in touch with Jungleworks for expert assistance.
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