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With our mysterious, unsustainable, and psychological attachment to pets, combined with a boom in pet ownership since those lonely pandemic times, means veterinary practices have come under increasing pressure.

Pet ownership has increased (56 to 70% US household penetration in the last 35 years). But, there are not enough vets.

To meet demand, a vet currently needs to see over 32 patients a day and by 2030, the U.S. will need nearly 41,000 additional veterinarians on current trends.

Just like doctors, vets spend a lot of their day on admin, while legacy systems are creaking under the weight of the new work.

This antiquated sector has become a ripe arena for tech companies. Rhapsody was bought by Chewy in H2 2022. Vetspire was bought by Pathaway/Thrive (Vet group). And ezyVet was bought by Idexx in H1 2022. And that’s just to name a few

We covered Digitail, a startup which grew out of Romania, automates the admin for veterinarians, back in 2021 at their seed round.

The startup has now closed a $11 million Series A funding round led by Atomico. They join previous investors byFounders, Gradient, and Partech. Atomico Principal Andreas Helbig joins the Digitail board as part of the investment. Allison Pickens (former COO of Gainsight) is joining as an angel with her new fund new-normal.ventures.

Digitail will use the funding to further scale operations across US and Canada, as well as develop the product.

The SaaS solution combines a Practice management platform, a ‘pet parent’ app for pet owners, and a Data Hub providing medical and business insights to veterinarians.

It claims veterinarians are able to see 2x as many patients using the software.

Digitail was founded in 2018 by Sebastian Gabor (CEO) and Ruxandra Pui (CPO), who had previously founded the development studio and IT consultancy ITGambit together.

Gabor told me the company started 2022 with $150k in ARR and ended Q4 2022 by passing $1M in ARR with over 700 animal hospitals worldwide using Digitail PIMS on a daily basis. He claims there are currently over 1.4M pet profiles in Digitail in more than 10 countries.

He says he was inspired to create Digital after having to completely restart his dog’s vaccination plan following a mis-scheduled appointment.

US pet care is estimated to grow from $118 bn in 2019 to $277 bn by 2030.

Our obsession with pets means startups aimed at Vets are booming, as Digitail shows by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch

Mukesh Ambani, one of Asia’s richest men, has made a splash in many industries over the past three decades. It now appears he has set his eyes on a new sector: Gaming.

JioGames, part of Reliance Industries’ telecom platform Jio, said on Thursday it has inked a 10-year strategic partnership with French firm Gamestream. The French firm, which offers clients white-labeling cloud gaming solutions, will work with the Indian giant to make an “ambitious” play on bringing cloud gaming to “1.4 billion” Indians, Jio said.

Jio said the partnership will help it scale its cloud gaming platform JioGamesCloud, which is currently in beta and available to users across a range of devices. The firm quietly launched JioGamesCloud in beta late last year, offering dozens of games (though very few AAA titles). JioGamesCloud is currently free during its beta test period.

A Jio spokesperson told TechCrunch that Reliance is not making an investment in Gamestream as part of the partnership.

Gamestream, whose partners include Ubisoft, has deployed its tech in many markets in Europe, the Middle East and Asia in tie ups with Etisalat, Telkom, Sunrise and Telekom Slovenije.

“India will soon be the new hub of the video game industry, with the potential of over 1 billion gamers thanks to the rapid deployment in India of Jio True 5G network, with high speed and low latency. Video games could become one of the digital services that contribute significantly to economic growth,” said Kiran Thomas, chief executive of Jio Platforms, in a statement.

“This partnership between Gamestream and Jio will enable every Indian to access a high-quality Cloud Gaming experience.”

India, the world’s second largest internet market, is not necessarily a very attractive gaming market. (India is usually not among the first wave of nations that receives the new PlayStation and Xbox consoles. Google never bothered to launch its abandoned Stadia platform in the South Asian market. Nintendo has no presence in the country.)

But mobile gaming has taken off the in India in recent years, thanks to the proliferation of cutrate mobile data prices and affordable Android handsets. Krafton’s PUBG Mobile was the most popular game in the country with as many as 50 million monthly active users before New Delhi yanked it amid national security concerns.

Amazon last month rolled out Prime Gaming, its subscription service that offers access to a number of titles, to its members in India. The gaming service, complementary to Amazon Prime and Video subscribers, offers users access to a range of mobile, PC and Mac games as well as in-game loot at no additional cost.

India’s Jio partners with Gamestream in cloud gaming push by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch