Robotic pet care: While you’re at work, this bot takes care of your best friend

Stuck at work doing overtime and not able to get home to feed your pet?

No need to worry; just pick up your smartphone. With the press of a button, you’re able to dispense food from Korean startup SinglePet’s hardware at home. The service even allows pets and their owners to interact through a live video stream direct to a mobile handset whenever and wherever they are so that you easily can check up on your pet at anytime.

Pet ownership, particularly among single people, is increasing rapidly. But with hectic work schedules, it is often difficult to balance looking after a pet and fulfilling one’s work requirements.

SinglePet combines a robotic pet care solution with a mobile application, which enables pet owners to take care of their animals at home regardless of how busy their work/social lives are. Singlepet uses M2M/loT technology through a smartphone app, which allows users to easily interact with their animals in real time, as well as providing a mobile interface for taking care of their pets (feeding, medicating, and watering).

Pet owners can also purchase pet food within the SinglePet app, a convenience that could be a future revenue stream for the company.

SinglePet claims that the Korean pet industry is worth $1.8 billion and is expected to reach $5.4 billion in 2016. The startup also says the Japanese and U.S. markets are worth 7 and 10 times that, respectively. A rise in the number of pets in the U.S. and increased spending per pet are the main factors that will contribute to the pet industry’s growth in the years ahead.

As the recovery from recent economic turmoil takes hold, household disposable income will rise and spending on pets will pick up even more, making the pet industry an attractive arena to enter for smart companies like SinglePet. SinglePet is expecting to start mass production later this year.

Going global

SinglePet recently accompanied beSUCCESS to Singapore as one of ten Korean startups that won the chance through the ‘K-APP Global Hub Program’ to go to Singapore for an intensive week of seminars, business matching and networking.

“The first objective we had with our trip to Singapore was to secure funding from global investors who could help us in our quest to go global”, CEO Jhon Park said. SinglePet is going all in by targeting the Japanese and U.S. markets first to achieve domination in this largely untapped market.

”We have met potential investors and partners in several countries, such as Japan, USA, Singapore, and Taiwan; and the trip was a huge success. We realized that even though we’re just a small Korean startup, it’s possible to succeed in the global market. We are now preparing our global market strategy and we can’t wait to see the future!”, Lynn Jeon at SinglePet said.

via VentureBeat http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/02/robotic-pet-care-while-youre-at-work-this-bot-takes-care-of-your-best-friend/