A recently launched consumer-to-consumer pet services marketplace in Singapore, aptly named Godpawrents, allows pet owners to find and book trusted, affordable pet sitters and other service providers.
Founded in 2023 and launched in March this year, Godpawrents is a pet services marketplace that helps pet owners find pet sitters who are godpawrent-worthy. These ‘godpawrents’ are home-based freelances who will visit the pet owner’s home to take care of their pet, walk their dog, groom the animal, train it, or transport it.
Individuals with relevant pet-handling experience can also sign up on the platform to be a godpawrent to their neighbour’s pets.
According to the Singapore Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the number of abandoned pets nearly tripled to 285 animals in 2023, up from 96 in 2022. A key driver was the rising cost of pet ownership.
Godpawrents was founded in part to help address this issue. By eliminating unnecessary costs and leveraging infrastructure such as PayNow, Godpawrents has been able to halve the platform fees offered by similar platforms from 19-25% down to 9-12%.
“By halving our fees, we enable pet sitters to earn more and charge less,” said Maurice Png, founder of the pet-sitting platform. “We want affordable pet services to be easily available to reduce pet abandonment. To date, we see noticeably lower list prices on our website. For example, a one-hour house visit costs about $20-40 on Godpawrents, compared to $30-50 on similar platforms. That’s about $70 savings for a week’s holiday.”
Launched in March, the website gained over 700 users in just four months. While that number may not seem impressive, one must remember that Singapore is a city state with less than 6 million people. Interestingly, it also has over 800,000 pet dogs and 100,000 pet cats, according to the latest report from Worldmetrics.org. The service invites members with the right experience to sign up to be a godpawrent, whether as a dog or cat sitter, dog walker, pet groomer, dog trainer, or pet transport service provider. Signing up is free.
SOURCE: PR Newswire
