Written by Bain Capital Ventures Partner Yumin Choi 

If you’re a pet parent, you understand the challenge of making sure your furry friends receive their medications and therapeutic diets on a timely basis. But it’s often difficult and time-consuming to visit a vet clinic to pick up medications. And in the age of Amazon, pet parents increasingly desire, and in fact expect, a more convenient, efficient home delivery solution. While direct-to-consumer online pharmacies exist, they frequently pose quality issues.

This is why we’re excited to lead a $50 million investment in Vetsource, a healthcare services company that’s empowering vet clinics to deliver better care to their patients via a powerful technology platform.

Win-win solution for all stakeholders

Vetsource adds tremendous value to all stakeholders within the pet care industry, including pet parents, vet clinics, distributors and manufacturers.

Vetsource delivers low-cost, quality-controlled prescription medications and therapeutic diets directly to pet parents without significant time or resources from the vet clinic. Thanks to convenient home delivery, pet parents increase their pets’ medication compliance and achieve better clinical outcomes for their pets at reasonable pricing. As one veterinarian explained, “We bend over backwards for our customers to use Vetsource. Our pet parents who use Vetsource’s Autoship have 100 percent compliance.”

For vet clinics, Vetsource enables the delivery of more personal, efficient and profitable care. Unlike direct-to-consumer online pharmacies, Vetsource is a partner to vet clinics, enabling them to satisfy pet parents’ demands for home delivery, while increasing the profitability of their pharmacy businesses. Vet clinics achieve superior economic outcomes, particularly through decreasing the overhead costs associated with their in-house pharmacies.

Transforming the vet clinic-pet parent relationship through technology

In addition to being a home delivery provider, Vetsource provides vet clinics with a proprietary, cloud-based platform that equips thousands of clinics across the United States with powerful tools to interact more frequently and conveniently with pet parents.

With this new round of financing, Vetsource will continue to build up its technology and offer new and improved SaaS capabilities to its happy customer base. We are confident that Vetsource can meaningfully change and positively impact the role of vet clinics and how they engage with pet parents, far beyond just pharmacy services.

Massive market opportunity and a team that’s poised to win

Animal health is one of the most attractive markets within healthcare. The amount pet parents spend on their pets in the United States is at an all-time high — close to $70 billion annually — and there’s tremendous room for innovation. Growth is consistent and there’s little cyclicality, even during recessionary periods. The market is also highly fragmented across approximately 25,000 vet clinics. Vetsource is uniquely positioned within this ecosystem thanks to its valuable partnerships with manufacturers and distributor channel partners.

We are excited to invest in the market leader in a high value-add, yet still nascent segment of an attractive industry. And, we’re beyond excited to partner with the management team at Vetsource, which is led by CEO Kurt Green and made up of animal health veterans who have been in the industry for over a decade. The Vetsource team prioritizes providing excellent customer service that vet clinics rave about. As one vet clinic manager explained, “Every clinic needs to have an online pharmacy to give its clients the convenience they are looking for, and Vetsource goes above and beyond.”

“We’re committed to empowering our veterinarians and dedicated to making care convenient for all pet parents,” said Kurt.

That’s a commitment we’re proud to get behind.