One for all the furry friends! After food & music events, Bengaluru now hosts pet festivals

BENGALURU: The Manpho Convention Centre near Manyata Tech Park will host fashion shows, live music, gaming sessions, workshops and exhibitions in December. So, what’s new, one would ask. The event will be for pets.

“Three acres of land will be divided into various experiences and training sessions for pets and their owners. Over 120 exhibitors from across the world will participate,” said Akshay Gupta, founder, Pet Fed, a bootstrap venture that has been organising pet festivals since 2014. The December event is being organised on a budget of Rs 1.2 crore.

According to London-based market intelligence firm Euromonitor International, Indians spent Rs 19.8 billion on pet care in 2017 and the pet industry here is growing at over 20% year on year. Bengaluru is the third-largest market for pet-centric services after Delhi and Mumbai. Clearly, it could be this demand that has prompted people to organise such a festival.



“These festivals curate events in large open spaces, something that is becoming rarer with the increasing space crunch in Bengaluru. And not all restaurants and hotels are pet-friendly. So options for recreational outings with pets are limited,” said Shekhar Gaonkar, cofounder, Petcart, a city-based pet-care solutions company that runs a resort for pets in Sarjapur. It plans to curate monthly carnivals in the two-acre space. “Pet parents will also have access to veterinarians, behaviourists and essential vaccinations.” For entrepreneurs like Swagata Paul, who sells homemade, zero-preservative pet food through her venture Canine Craving, such festivals are a platform to create awareness about healthier nutritional choices for pets that owners can easily access.

F&B outlets too are opening up to the idea of hosting pet festivals. According to Pravesh Pandey, director-operations at Byg Brewski in Hennur, it is an opportunity for them to collaborate with interesting startup innovations in the pet space. The inaugural edition of their pet festival, PettinOut, saw an encouraging turnout on Sunday. “We are now planning a pet-friendly menu as a weekly feature. Depending on the response, we’ll make it regular.”

Pet parent Anand Rao, who has a four-year-old Golden Retriever, said organisers of pet festivals must be more aggressive when it comes to promoting such events on social media. “These festivals are family outings that result in some much-needed outdoor activity for pets. I believe that it contributes to their overall wellness.”