How Varun Sadana Applied Licious Lessons to Build Supertails Into India's Pet Care Leader
From meat unicorn co-founder to pet telemedicine pioneer, Varun's playbook reveals how pattern recognition across industries creates competitive advantage
At 8 AM on a Tuesday morning, while most founders are checking email, Varun Sadana reviews overnight veterinary consultations from pet parents across 24 Indian cities. The dashboard shows 70,000 completed telemedicine sessions since Supertails launched in 2021, making it India’s largest pet teleconsultation platform. This isn’t an accident, it’s the result of applying hard-won lessons from digitizing India’s meat industry to an even larger opportunity in pet care.
Varun’s journey from mechanical engineer to serial entrepreneur represents a new archetype in Indian startups: the category translator. Rather than inventing entirely new business models, these founders identify proven playbooks and apply them to adjacent markets experiencing similar demographic shifts. The results speak for themselves. Supertails has raised $31.5 million, achieved a ₹527 crore valuation, serves 150,000+ pet parents, and positioned itself at the center of India’s $3.6 billion pet care market that’s doubling to $7 billion by 2028.
Listen to the complete Founder Thesis Podcast conversation to understand how Varun identified market inflection points and built defensible competitive moats across two different consumer categories.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
From IBM Engineer to Pet Care Pioneer: The Apprenticeship Years
Understanding Varun’s success requires tracing his apprenticeship in recognizing consumer behavior shifts. After completing mechanical engineering at NIT Kurukshetra and an MBA from IIM Lucknow, he spent formative years at IBM (2005-2007), Hindustan Unilever (2010-2012), and five years at Snapdeal (2012-2017) managing electronics categories and building seller ecosystems with 100,000+ sellers and 400-member teams.
Each role taught crucial lessons. At HUL, he learned how demographic changes drive consumer product adoption. At Snapdeal, he managed P&L for electronics verticals while learning how technology platforms aggregate fragmented supply chains. But the real education came at Licious, where Varun joined as Senior VP Operations in 2017 and was elevated to co-founder in 2019.
“I am looking forward to this next chapter. It’s amazing to see how Licious has grown in such a short span of time. What is notable though is the emphasis and trust that the company puts on their people.”
Witnessing meat industry digitization firsthand revealed how unorganized traditional markets create opportunities for digital-first players targeting urban, quality-conscious consumers. The Licious experience taught him to identify the convergence of urbanization, nuclear families, and changing consumption patterns. When pet ownership surged from 20 million to 38+ million animals between 2019 and 2024, with urban penetration reaching 12% of households and spending hitting ₹3,000-5,000 monthly per household, Varun recognized the same demographic forces at work.
The Strategic Translation: Why Pet Care Follows the Meat Playbook
In 2021, Varun made a counterintuitive decision: leave a unicorn-bound company to start over. The move puzzled observers but reflected deep strategic thinking about market timing. The pet care opportunity followed identical patterns to meat digitization, traditional unorganized supply chains serving price-sensitive consumers through offline channels, but demographic shifts creating a new segment of urban professionals treating pets as family members and willing to pay premiums for quality.
“Similar to the meat market, the pet market too needs disruption as pets are now seen as companions. The relentless passion for the pet care ecosystem and a vision to make India a pet-friendly nation unites the founders of Supertails with their team of pet care experts and enthusiasts.”
The data was compelling. Pet adoption surged 40-50% during COVID-19 as remote work created companionship demand. India’s pet care market grew from $1.6 billion in 2019 to $3.6 billion in 2024, representing 15-20% annual growth and making it the world’s fastest-growing pet care market. Yet accessing quality veterinary care remained difficult through fragmented, offline networks.
Co-founding Supertails with Aman Tekriwal and Vineet Khanna, Varun avoided common marketplace mistakes. Instead of competing purely on product selection and pricing, Supertails would differentiate through healthcare services that create stickier customer relationships, a strategy requiring significant upfront investment but creating barriers that pure-play commerce platforms cannot match.
The Healthcare Moat: Building India’s Largest Pet Telemedicine Network
While competitors built e-commerce marketplaces, Varun chose healthcare-first positioning. Supertails assembled 20+ in-house veterinarians and completed 70,000+ telemedicine consultations, covering 12,000+ pin codes across 24 cities with 24-hour delivery. Each consultation creates customer data enabling personalized product recommendations. Healthcare relationships prove stickier than transactional commerce. Veterinary expertise provides credibility for private label product development.
“While we’re building Supertails on the back of technology, some services like doctor consultations, vaccinations, and diagnostics are best experienced by touching and feeling. We aim to add a total of 50 veterinary doctors over the next few years.”
The strategy now extends beyond telemedicine. Supertails is building its first offline veterinary center with plans to scale to 50+ locations, creating an omnichannel healthcare platform that competitors will struggle to replicate. This approach also influenced the company’s Gen Z targeting strategy, focusing on “pet parents” rather than traditional “pet owners.”
“Supertails caters to the GenZ pet parent audience. We are aiming to build a brand that makes pet parenting easy and fun for them. When it comes to marketing, we believe that more than the right channel, it’s the right narrative that appeals to the Gen Z consumer.”
This demographic distinction shaped everything from product development to marketing. Campaigns like “Crime Master Doggo” went viral by treating pets as characters rather than products, building brand affinity through storytelling rather than traditional performance marketing and creating organic word-of-mouth that reduces customer acquisition costs.
From Marketplace to Brand House: The Private Label Evolution
Eighteen months after launch, Varun made another strategic pivot. Rather than remaining a marketplace aggregator, Supertails launched private label brands: Henlo for dry food, Skaters for accessories, and Scoopy for cat litter. This evolution addresses two critical challenges, reducing dependence on third-party brands that could disintermediate the platform and capturing higher margins in categories where Supertails developed customer insights.
“All our private label brands are customised to suit the needs of Indian pets with the use of natural ingredients. The revenue contribution of the segment is expected to touch 25-30% eventually.”
The private label business currently contributes in the late-single digits to overall revenue but targets 25-30% as it scales. This progression from marketplace to brand house mirrors successful D2C platforms globally and leverages data from 70,000+ consultations to identify product gaps and formulation opportunities. Veterinary expertise provides credibility for health-focused products that command premium pricing.
Capital Validation and Market Dynamics
Supertails’ funding trajectory tells the story of institutional validation. The company has raised $31.5 million across five rounds, with its latest $15.3 million Series B led by RPSG Capital Ventures in February 2024. The investor roster includes Fireside Ventures, DSG Consumer Partners, Saama Capital, and celebrity backers including CRED’s Kunal Shah, Mamaearth’s Ghazal Alagh, and Deepika Padukone.
Current metrics demonstrate strong fundamentals: ₹67.3 crore annual revenue in FY24, consistent 10-12% month-on-month growth, 265 employees, and ₹527 crore valuation. The broader sector has attracted over $170 million in recent investments, with Drools raising $60 million from L Catterton, Heads Up For Tails securing $37 million from Verlinvest and Sequoia Capital India, and industry analysts projecting several billion-dollar exits over the next 3-5 years.
The competitive landscape reveals both opportunity and challenge. With 500+ pet tech startups operating in India, the market remains highly fragmented but consolidating around well-capitalized players. Key competitors include Heads Up For Tails (1 million+ customers, $37 million funding), Zigly ($388 million revenue in 2023), and Vetic (veterinary clinic chains). Mars International dominates pet food with 50%+ market share but focuses on manufacturing rather than direct consumer relationships.
“The influx of competition in the space is a step towards organizing the industry. We’re growing by nearly 10-12% every month and expect the revenue contribution of our private label segment to touch 25-30% eventually.”
Supertails’ healthcare-first positioning creates differentiation, but the planned expansion from 24 to 100+ cities combined with 50+ offline veterinary centers demands significant resources. Recent market activity includes exploring acquisition of Blue 7 Vets to expand offline pet care services, signaling aggressive growth ambitions in a sector ripe for M&A activity.
The Platform Playbook: Lessons for Category Creators
Varun’s approach reveals patterns that extend beyond pet care to other consumer categories experiencing demographic pressures. His success stems from three interconnected insights.
First, pattern recognition across industries matters more than domain expertise. Demographic shifts, technology adoption, and consumer behavior changes create similar opportunities in different verticals. Entrepreneurs who develop frameworks for identifying these patterns can apply proven playbooks to new markets with higher success probabilities.
Second, execution trumps opportunity identification. Varun’s success comes from operational excellence, strategic patience, and willingness to make complex decisions (healthcare focus, omnichannel expansion, private label development) that create long-term competitive advantages rather than short-term growth metrics.
Third, platform dynamics require integrated thinking. By aggregating supply (veterinarians, manufacturers, service providers) and demand (pet parents), Supertails creates network effects that strengthen with scale. Each veterinary consultation generates health trend data. Product sales reveal preference patterns. Service interactions build customer relationships. This integrated view enables personalized recommendations and predictive health monitoring that pure-play competitors cannot replicate.
The pet care category demonstrates how traditional Indian markets transform through digital-first approaches that respect local consumer preferences while leveraging global best practices. This model applies to numerous sectors where organized players serve small percentages of total addressable markets. For the broader Indian startup ecosystem, Supertails represents evolution from pure technology disruption toward deeper integration with offline infrastructure, creating comprehensive customer experiences that are difficult to replicate.
As India’s pet care market heads toward $7 billion with global markets reaching $500 billion by 2030, companies like Supertails are building infrastructure that will serve the next generation of pet parents. India’s cost structure and technical talent provide competitive advantages for eventually scaling internationally. The question isn’t whether India will produce pet care unicorns, it’s how many, and how quickly they can expand globally.
For Varun’s complete strategic playbook on identifying market inflection points and building defensible competitive moats across multiple consumer categories, listen to the full Founder Thesis Podcast episode. Subscribe for more deep-dive conversations with India’s most thoughtful entrepreneurs.
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