Pet health and wellness company Zenoo provides natural, raw, and freeze-dried dog food subscription service in Europe. We put the Co-founder and Co-CEO of Zenoo Agota Jakutyte in the Hot Seat.

Tell us in a few sentences about your company and the product?

ZENOO is a pet health and wellness brand born from unconditional love between my rescued chihuahua Elly and me. When I had to fight for her health, I reached the world’s TOP leaders in pet health, who told me the number one reason why the health of our pets is going down each year – poor nutrition. We don’t know so many secrets about commercial pet food that you couldn’t imagine…It consists of 46-70% carbohydrates, in other words, sugar. It’s overcooked to make it easy to use but has low nutritional value. So, we switched Elly to an entirely natural raw diet that drastically changed her life. That’s why we wanted to help more pet parents around the world. We made not only healthy but also convenient pet food using the freeze-drying technology used by NASA.

How was 2021 for ZENOO? What were your key challenges?

It was a great year for ZENOO. We closed our first pre-seed round, letting us grow and open new markets. We got traction from many EU countries like the UK, Germany, and Switzerland. We saw that we needed to fuel our more aggressive growth by adding an amazing CMO, spreading our product range to first supplements, and ordering more food flavours to grow basket size.

The main challenge was working capital because we needed to order more food upfront. 

What are your key goals for ZENOO in 2022?

Scale EU market, launch cat food, open B2B segment (we already closed the deal for €1.5M of cat food) and grow our team. We also want to open our personalization funnel where we can increase our basket size, generate more leads and potentially minimize our CAC.

What is the outlook for your sector in the coming year?

Based on data from Euromonitor International, the market size of the dog food segment in the Europe Union is estimated at USD 13.1 billion in 2021, which demonstrates the overall scale of our potential end market.

Who are the company’s principal shareholders and management, and are there any plans for future hires or positions?

We plan to upgrade our customer success department because communication and a smooth monthly subscription process are essential. Also, to ensure that we can fulfil all our clients’ possible needs, we want to add an operations manager to our team. 

Can you profile or paint a picture of a typical customer of ZENOO?

Mostly it’s women from 25-45years old who usually cares about her health and invests in better quality products because she knows the saying “You are what you eat”. 

What is your key message to customers, and how do you convey that information?

 Many health improvements come from switching our products: allergies, longevity, eye staining, digestion, shinier coat, and even cancer & diabetes prevention. Besides health benefits – our product is the most convenient compared to other healthy dog foods. 

What area/ geography/ sector presents the most significant opportunity?

We see the exponential growth of freeze-dried raw food in the US, and we are the pioneers of such food in the EU. So first, we want to scale potential EU countries and open the B2B lines in Asia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and others. And after our next round, we plan to open the US market too.

If you could leave investors with just three words to describe the future of ZENOO, what would they be?

Sustainability, team, growth

How can Funderbeam investors help you?

We always seek advice and help from our investors. Especially for help with marketing, B2B sales, D2C model growth, stock management, and operations. Therefore, we hope our future investors will be glad to share their experiences and help us spread the happy pet vibe.