[100 Emerging Women Leaders] This entrepreneur is helping pet parents monitor pet health

Vani Aiyer had helped her friend Vivek Srinivas to get a boxer, Bruno. However, he used to constantly fall sick, especially when Srinivas would be away on trips. This would throw things out of gear for Vivek and Bruno in general. As a result, he used to call her to discuss solutions for his pet’s health.

It was during this time that Aiyer realised the challenge people faced with every vet visit—a lack of comprehensive data that often served as a roadblock to accurate diagnoses. She discovered that most pet health issues stemmed from this data gap, making it difficult for vets to provide precise prognoses and leaving pets unprepared for the sudden onset of illnesses.

Through research discussions with vets and pet parents, Aiyer and Srinivas decided to start VETiNSTANT in 2023 to connect pets, vets, and pet parents for timely diagnosis. Currently, the Chennai-based startup offers its products for dogs and cats, but it will soon include cows and other animals.

“I have been a pet parent for life and have faced concerns for their health. It is not enough to claim to be a parent to them. We need to get the right information to the vet to help them treat pets better,” she tells HerStory.

Aiyer emphasises that the goal is to enhance animal healthcare worldwide, regardless of location or species.

“We aim to digitise the animal healthcare network from when a pet or animal enters the vet clinic to when it exits the same,” she adds.

The startup offers P.A.W.S. (Pets Administration and Workflow System) for clinics.

It is a customisable system for conducting veterinary operations. It also digitises clinic management by automating payments, billing, and inventory, and simplifying consultations by automatically creating notes, prescriptions, and billing records.

VETiNSTANT also provides AI-driven clinical notes in 99 languages. It also has intuitive appointment scheduling, reduces wait times, and enhances the customer experience.

The startup also offers a non-invasive, hand-held pet health monitoring device called ExamD, which integrates with the VETiNSTANT tracker app. Aiyer claims that the product has been tried, tested, and validated at Pondicherry Veterinary University for over a year on thousands of dogs. With ExamD, pet parents can monitor their pet’s temperature, SPO2, heart, lung, and abdomen auscultation.

The device is priced at ₹6,500 and includes features for temperature, heart auscultation, lung auscultation, and abdomen auscultation. For ₹9,000, one can get all these features along with SpO2 and heart rate monitoring.

It also offers the Exam D Pro device for veterinarians for Rs 15,000, as it offers more parameters. Exam D Pro, designed for vets, tracks multiple metrics that professionals can handle, like murmur identification and grading for early heart condition detection, lung abnormality detection, insights for early detection of issues like COPD, asthma, wheezing, and more.

Additionally, the VETiNSTANT app tracks a pet’s health by collecting data on the cloud. Aiyer explains that pet parents can easily consult with their vet, receive prescriptions, and share health data from ExamD pro through the app, among others.

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The journey

After completing her graduation, Aiyer pursued Post graduate diploma in business management, Marketing and Finance from the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad.

She worked most of her professional life in advertising at JWT, majorly focusing on Ford’s business. She has also worked in corporate communications and spearheaded multiple projects in governance, compliance, and diversity space.

Before launching her startup, she served as the Head of Corporate Communications at Nissan India. In 2022, she decided to quit her corporate career and venture onto the path of entrepreneurship.

Aiyer believes that this transition has been a learning curve.

“The big difference is you don’t get to tell anybody what or how you know or how you solve a problem,” she adds.

Aiyer emphasises that transitioning to a startup environment pushes people to revisit their fundamentals—questioning their existing knowledge and evaluating its relevance in that context.

“You learn to juggle multiple portfolios, create systems and processes that work well for your business and probably never existed,” she adds.

However, she notes that the transition is not all roses. Moving from a corporate professional environment to the startup space can initially be frustrating and confusing.

“Eventually, you learn to ride the waves with their ebbs and flows. The exhilaration you feel with every subsequent solution you find makes you stronger. The problems that pull you down, challenge your business ethos, ultimately make you even more resilient,” she explains.

Moreover, as an entrepreneur, one might not receive a regular salary at the end of each month, which has made her more conscious of her finances. As a result, she has to be more frugal on a personal level than ever before.

Aiyer’s journey so far has not been without challenges.

She remembers constantly being asked about her work, with people often treating it lightly and saying things like, “Something with dogs.”

However, she believes that the narrative is now changing, as the startup has been incubated at IIT Madras Research Park Incubation Cell for the past year and a half, and has received its first round of pre-revenue funding.

Talking about gender bias, she says that she has been fortunate not to face any as a woman entrepreneur.

“That may be because I have navigated years of corporate gender bias issues. In the startup world, there are specific opportunities for women-led startups, investors, and mentors,” she adds.

Aiyer, however, believes that keeping oneself updated is of utmost importance.

“Don’t stop educating yourself, whether you work for someone or yourself. Watch everyone, listen to every podcast, and read every book. Stay up-to-date on the news. No one can take away the knowledge you acquire,” she adds.