Petcube, the company that keeps people connected with their pets, announced today that it has closed $1.1M seed funding co-led by AVentures Capital and Almaz Capital with participation from SOSVentures, Mint.com co-founder and CTO David Michaels and a security expert, former Chief Malware Researcher at Facebook, Nick Bilogorskiy.
With the new capital, Petcube looks to expand worldwide sales to brick-and-mortar retail stores in the US and Canada, establish greater overall distribution and help more caring pet parents stay connected to their furry friends.
The Petcube Camera is the first gadget that lets pet owners watch, talk and play with their pet, no matter where they are. The wide-angle, Wi-Fi-enabled camera with real time video and built-in laser pointer is controlled through Petcube’s free iOS and Android applications. Petcube’s mobile apps form a community of pet lovers, allowing anyone to share pet photos, find new friends and play with publicly shared pets.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign and a year in development, Petcube Camera was delivered to the project’s backers and early customers in December 2014. The first batch was totally sold out before Christmas. Petcube is currently shipping the cameras from the second production batch.
Co-founder and CEO of Petcube, Yaroslav Azhnyuk, stated:
“The pet industry is going to be completely transformed for the digital age and innovative products like Petcube are paving the way to this exciting future. Given the impressive growth of home monitoring cameras, the massive pool of pet owners and the inherent virality of pet videos on the internet, there’s tremendous untapped potential in the pet camera market.”
AVentures Capital’s Yevgen Sysoyev explained:
“While home surveillance and security cameras show great traction on the market, one of the most widespread use cases is watching on pets. Undoubtedly, Petcube has produced the most amazing product, allowing users to not only watch, but also to play with pets.”
Almaz Capital’s Daniil Stolyarov added:
“Petcube goes beyond a beautifully engineered interactive device by combining hardware, software, and online community to create a unique experience for pet owners. We like Petcube’s vision for a full ecosystem built around capturing, sharing and enjoying engaging media content about pets.”
According to a research from NextMarket Insights, DIY self-installed home security solutions will account for $1.5 billion by 2020. As reported by APPA, the pet market in the US is estimated to reach $58B in 2014, with over 68% of U.S. households owning a pet, which equates to 82.5 million homes. There were a couple notable acquisitions in the pet retail and pet tech space recently, which shows a growing interest in this area.
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