What did you do with your pandemic shutdown time in 2020? I made some bread. Karan Dalal and Arnuv Tandon, however, spent theirs trying to revolutionize pet ownership.
Dalal and Tandon, a pair of teenagers from Sunnyvale, Calif., wanted to create a way to help pet owners keep track of everything from feeding schedules to booster shots—and even a revolutionary way to keep track of the pets themselves. The end result was PetCode.
PetCode provides a surprising amount of value to pet owners of all types. As anyone who has ever lost a dog can attest, collar tags are an important safety step. Additionally, vets and pet shelters have long championed microchipping your pets as a means of providing a constant, easily scannable way for pet care professionals to help reunite pets with their owners. PetCode's basic functionality helps combine those two ideas.
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The system consists of an app on your phone and a QR code printed on a durable, plastic tag for your pet's collar. Once you've got your tag, you download the app, scan the code, and enter your pet's information. From there, if your pup or kitty gets out and wanders around town, someone who finds your pet can scan the QR code and be given your contact information. Pet owners will then receive an alert their pet was found with a location pin of where the tag was scanned.
All by itself, that's an incredibly valuable service, but PetCode doesn't stop with simple tracking. You can also use its scheduling function to give you push alerts, reminding you of feeding times, booster shots, medication times, and more. You can also store vaccination and veterinary records on the app for easy reference. Finally, there's PetCode's "discovery" function that shows you the pet-friendly parks in your area (complete with ratings and reviews), making it a great way to find new places in your hometown or on the road.
"The biggest challenge in setting up the app was bundling all of our features into an intuitive, easy-to-use interface," Dalal told Daily Paws in an email. "There are a lot of aspects to pet management, and we wanted to make sure that our app made it easy to take care of everything from Fido's safety to his medical records and daily activities."
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And, lest you think the young inventors were happy to sit on their initial product and call it a day, they are working on adding even more features as the app becomes widely adopted.
"Some features we're excited to release are 'Smart Predictions'—which utilize artificial intelligence to learn your pet's schedule and remind you about your pet's activities (i.e., the app learns your pet's scheduled walk time and reminds you if your pet has not been walked); 'Community Notifications' that notify nearby animal shelters and PetCode users about your missing pet; and 'Pet Competitions'—a fun new way to share your pet's life with the PetCode community," Dalal said.
Dalal and Tandon started working on PetCode in March of 2020 and have put the ensuing year to good use; not only is the app approved on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, but the pair have grown enough to hire nine additional employees—all ambitious teenagers like themselves.
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