An animal lover at heart, Raghavee is an active member of several NGOs focused on feeding, treating, and finding forever homes for strays. She adopted Simba, an indie mix from an NGO during lockdown and her love for strays only multiplied there on.

Throughout her experience with different NGOs, she would foster several abandoned pets waiting to get adopted. She started to investigate the root cause of this problem and discovered interesting insights. Adopting a pet brings tremendous joy, and with this joy, comes a great deal of ownership, responsibility, and anxiety, especially for first time pet parents. There might be several episodes of mixed emotions of happiness and intimidation which is natural. Welcoming a new family member, pet parents are forced to make decisions around their pet’s social life, health, physical activity, grooming and training, on a daily basis. These decisions, regardless of how minute, have massive impacts on a pet’s wellbeing. The lack of information around such issues has led parents to slide deeper into anxiety, making incorrect parenting choices, and worse- abandoning of pets.

Recognizing a gap in the market for a pet parent community, to share information, Raghavee Goel, a serial entrepreneur, developed FetchMutt- a location enabled smart app designed to connect pet parents and pet businesses nearby. It helps pet parents connect with one-another to host fun playdates for their furry babies, discover trusted vets, pet shops, spas, trainers, dog walkers, boardings, and other pet businesses around them. She envisions a world where every pet gets all the love and care it deserves, never get abandoned, and has an entire community around to provide it with the best.

In an exclusive interview with women entrepreneur, Raghavee, she shares her early experiences, her motivation behind founding FetchMutt, and much more:

Shed Some Light On Your Early Educational Journey And The Prior Industry Experience That You Bring To The Table. What Motivated You To Establish Fetchmutt.

I completed my bachelors from NIFT, Hyderabad, after which I founded my design studio and then decided to pursue my masters from The University of Sydney. During my time in Sydney, I did a bit of consulting work, where I helped budding start-ups with their operations management, compiling pitch decks, and optimizing processes.

Coming back to India, I adopted Simba and I wanted him to have nothing short of the best. Being an avid member of several NGOs, I had several people guiding me with the minutest of animal care tips, but not pet parenting tips. He loves meeting other dogs, but this was only possible through pet events, and pet cafes. Both of which were once in a month affair. It was then that I felt a need to build myself not just an animal lovers’ community, but a pet parents’ community for pets like Simba to socialize regularly, and parents like me to get help when I needed.

What Are Some Of The Various Roles And Responsibilities That You Shoulder At Fetchmutt? What Are Some Of The Major Challenges That You Face In Your Current Role And How Do You Overcome Them?

As a Product Manager, I am responsible for setup the roadmaps for the business plan, setting up milestones, going through extensive surveys, putting together user needs and communicating the same with the UX & UI team, and so on. There have been many challenges throughout the journey. Being a bootstrap company, we have to make the most out of our limited resources. Not being from a tech background has its share of challenges as it involves engrossing myself deep into every little technical detail to articulate the features that our users would get addicted to. Being a woman entrepreneur in the IT industry, which is majorly is male-dominated requires a lot of studying as well as consulting senior tech developers, to be able to stay ahead in the game.

What Are Some Of The Major Milestones That You Have Achieved In Your Professional Journey? What Has Been The Driving Force Behind Your Success As A Business Leader?

So far, I have helped over 150 pet adoptions as well as helped and contributed funds for the treatment of around 195 strays, which includes dogs, monkeys, cows, and cats. Being able to bring together hundreds of animal lovers, building a community so strong that we are able to feed over 500 strays on daily, raising funds for vaccinations and spaying of over 300 strays is something that bring me immense joy. I have been able to accomplish all of it by building around me a community of staunch animal lovers.

"A woman has many faces – that of a wife, a mother, a daughter, but i believe that it is only when she is working towards something professionally that she can be truly herself"

I am passionate about the work I do and deeply believe in it. That helps me put my 100% and beyond. I strive to build a world where every pet parent has enough resources that no parent is compelled to abandon them and put them on the streets, without food and shelter. My very capable co-founder, Utkarsh Abhilash, who not only understands my vision and supports me throughout is a pet parent himself and is just as dedicated to making this dream a reality.

How Do You Stay Abreast Of The Evolutions Occurring Within Your Respective Field Of Work And The Tech Landscape? What Is Your Vision For Fetchmutt’s Growth?

Being in a tech landscape, it is very essential to keep a close eye on the latest trends in the tech space. I keep myself informed about the new technological developments happening around the globe, the latest software as well as coding languages, and the platforms for coding that can be more scalable while providing better performance. We're also trying to keep in line with products that are on dev tools as well as on social media and are also planning to integrate AI in the next release of FetchMutt to satisfy the customers while providing the services and product requirements of the users. We are also in talks with AR specialists for exploring new features for FetchMutt.

What Would Your Advice Be To Young Women And Girls Who Also Aspire To Become Business Leaders And Entrepreneurs In The Future?

Find your passion. And then be relentlessly persistent. There is no other way, there is no other key to success, there are no shortcuts to success. Draw out the noise and stop trying to make everyone happy, stop trying to compare yourself with others. Success looks very different to different people. All you need is your passion, and the ‘sanak’ to never give up. Magic will happen. It takes time but when you manifest it hard enough, it will surely happen.

Raghavee Goel,  Founder,  Fetchmutt

Armed with a bachelors from NIFT, Hyderabad and then a masters degree from The University of Sydney Raghavee gained consulting experince in Sydney where she helped budding start-ups with their operations management, compiling pitch decks, and optimizing processes. She is an animal lover and envisions a world where every pet gets all the love and care it deserves.