Pet firm secures €5m funding to fuel European expansion
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DogBuddy - Europe’s fastest growing online marketplace for dog sitting - has closed a Series A investment round of more than €5M to deliver continued European expansion.
This fresh funding brings DogBuddy’s total investment to c. €10M, doubling the total funds raised to date, and making the business the most well funded dog sitting marketplace in Europe.
The latest round of financing demonstrates continued confidence in the business from existing private investors, as well as the addition of several prominent new investors. The group of new investors join previous backers of the expanding business, including Sweet Capital - the investment fund created and funded by the founders of King.com.
Commenting on the investment, DogBuddy Founder & CEO, Richard Setterwall notes: "Based on the strong growth we’ve seen in Sweden over the past year, and the successful launch of Norway this January, I’m excited to bring DogBuddy to even more European countries in the months to come.
"With this continued support and backing from our investors, we’ll be able to help make life easier for even more owners throughout Europe."
The Pan-European business - with offices in London, Stockholm and Barcelona, and operations in seven countries - plans to use the investment to launch additional European markets following recent entry to Sweden and Norway.
This new funding will also be used to expand the team’s technical operations, and invest further in marketing to raise awareness of home dog boarding, doggy daycare and dog walking amongst dog owners.
An estimated $154M1 was invested in the pet-tech sector last year alone globally - a more than four-fold increase in just four years. In addition to innovation from businesses like DogBuddy within the pet care industry, pet health, wellness, food and wearables have all seen increased interest and investment over the past year.
With this increased interest in pet-tech, DogBuddy board member and CEO of Sweet Capital, Christian Dörffer adds: "DogBuddy has proven how their service solves a very real problem faced by hundreds of thousands of dog owners all over Europe.
"We’re delighted to welcome new investors in the latest funding round, which will allow DogBuddy to continue to grow into new markets and explore additional opportunities in the pet-tech space”.
DogBuddy was founded in 2013 and has grown exponentially to become Europe’s leading online dog sitting community, with more than 500,000 dog lovers already registered.
With over 30,000 approved dog sitters using the service, DogBuddy matches dog owners with local and reliable dog sitters to provide Doggy Day Care, Home Dog Boarding, and Dog Walking across the UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Sweden and Norway.
For more information visit https://dogbuddy.com
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