But it wasn't always smooth sailing for them. After the lockdowns ended sometime in 2021, demand for pet tele-consultation services dried up. By focusing on a remote type of business model and spending time onboarding clinics and vets, the duo had not anticipated the challenge of retaining consumers who initially came so easily.
Su concurred, adding that the nature of the business and the way they were trying to grow it wasn't exactly traditional. Additionally, Lee said that Southeast Asia is still culturally "immature" when it comes to pet care. "It's only been in the last one or two generations where you're starting to see people start to treat their pets as part of the family. What we realised is that a lot of pet owners would only come to us at a fairly late stage of a pet's condition," said Lee. Most pet conditions, according to Lee, are much cheaper and easier to treat if they are detected early.