Fuzzy Pet Health Raises $8M For Pet Telemedicine

Frustrated by the expensive and thus exclusive veterinary industry, Zubin Bhettay started Fuzzy Pet Health in 2016.

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The San Francisco company just raised $8 million Series A, led by Matrix Partners, upping its total funding to $12.5 million. The new financing will allow Fuzzy to continue to expand into new areas, scale its in-home visits, and build up its technology uses for telemedicine consultations. Separate from this financing round, the San Francisco-based company scooped up San Jose’s Fetch Labs, which helps manage animals through a digital network with other pet owners. The company is excited about adding more of a pet owner network, and potentially even using Fetch Labs’ system to track missing pets.

“Pet health advice [today] is either your pet is fine, or your pet is going to spontaneously implode in five minutes,” said co-founder Bhettay over a coffee at Workshop Cafe, where he first thought of the company.

Let’s learn how Fuzzy helps stressed owners understanding whether their dog’s mole is just a mole, or a sign of an illness.

Pet Tech

It works like this: a worried pet owner can open up the Fuzzy application on their phones, snap a picture of their sick cat, and send it through to one of Fuzzy’s 65 veterinarians. The company will then “triage” the type of request and answer accordingly. Since a lot of pet owners have similar questions, Bhettay says that it has sped up its response time as it grows. So far, the company has done between 60,000 to 70,000 consultations since starting in 2016, he estimates.

“You can’t imagine the amount of poop pictures we have,” Bhettay laughed.

The bigger pet and tech market is definitely full of massive companies like Rover, Wag, and the recently-public Chewy. However when it comes to telemedicine, Bhettay tells me that he doesn’t think there’s a front-winner in the veterinary market yet. Another one even raised this week. Until the industry consolidates and matures, competition amid early stage companies will stay fierce. And Fuzzy’s new capital will help it keep up.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.