Inspired by Comic Con, a popular comic entertainment festival, Akshay Gupta, began explore ideas to start a business. At the age of 25, a Hindu college alumnus decided to start India’s biggest pet festival - Pet Fed in 2014.

Pet Fed seeks to be a forum for pet lover with the aim of having a platform where pet owners can find everything that they would require for their pet related needs, from pet food to pet-friendly cars as well as to spread awareness about pet keeping.

Pet Fed organised its very first venture as a free event at Delhi Haat recently. It instantly became a popular hit. Akshay first tasted success in 2016 when the festival witnessed a gathering of more than 20,000 people. The unique concept of this festival was well received with leading media citing the festival as one of the most successful events of 2016. Since its inception, Pet Fed has grown leaps and bounds and has expanded to other cities as well.

Akshay recalls “We started when we felt that there was an event for every liking be it art, comics, fashion but there was nothing for people who had pets or love animals. That’s when we introduced Pet Fed. This year we have done our 4th edition.”

The festival is increasing its visitorship every year by good amount and the last year company saw 6x growth. 

“We first studied the closest parallel event which runs in the country - Comic Con. We identified how they started in India,”  he adds.

The event has sponsors like Tata Motors, Pedigree, Royal Canin, and Amazon. This year the biggest contributor to Pet fed has been Dogsee.

In terms of branding and promotion Akshay says this year he has done a 360 degree promotional campaign. “There was also huge radio campaign. Comedy Central and Color Infinity were also partners. We also ran ads on Social Media.”

Pet fed has done two events this year in Delhi and Mumbai, each event costing approximately Rs 1 crore, he claims. “Next year we are also planning to do at least five cities Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad.” Akshay says.

radhika.vashisht@mydigitalfc.com