Even as private funding hit an all-time high in 2015, Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus of diversified conglomerate Tata Sons Ltd, has started off the New Year by investing in pet-care portal DogSpot.in. The quantum of investment was not made public.

This is Ratan Tata’s 20th investment in a start-up, making him among the top individual investors in new ventures.

DogSpot is an online pet-care shop started in 2014 by Rana Atheya, an electronics engineer from MJP Rohilkhand University and an MBA from Coventry University, UK. The venture has also received investments from Ronnie Screwvala, who led the previous round along with India Quotient and K Ganesh.

Growing segment The funds raised will be used to offer a new range of products. The global pet-care market breached the $100-billion mark in 2014, with the US alone accounting for about $58 billion. With over four million pet dogs, the Indian pet-care market is pegged at over $1.22 billion, growing at over 35 per cent annually.

Rana Atheya, CEO, DogSpot.in, said the “Indian pet-care sector is going through a phase of huge growth and transformation. DogSpot.in is poised to become an agent of this transformation.”

A report by financial research firm VCCEdge points out that VC investments crossed a new milestone in 2015. A record 473 VC deals were registered during the year against 307 in 2014, according to the report. Deal value too more than doubled, to $5.4 billion from $2.3 billion in 2014.

Ratan Tata has also invested in a couple of foreign start-ups, including US-based Altaeros Energy and Singapore-based analytics firm Crayon Data. He has picked up minority stakes in early-stage start-ups and Indian Unicorns like Ola, Snapdeal and Paytm.

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