Small pets are becoming a big consumer hot spot. With the increase in work pressure and emotional needs of modern people, the pet industry has entered the development air, and pet medical, the most important branch of the pet industry, has also exploded.
According to public data, from 2010 to 2016, the compound annual growth rate of China's pet industry was 49.1%, ranking first in the growth of various industries. The pet medical industry belongs to the lower reaches of the industry chain, including disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment, and pet health. It is the second largest sub-sector in the pet industry. According to the 2017 pet industry market size of 180 billion yuan, the pet medical market accounted for 23%, China's pet medical market size is about 41.4 billion yuan.
In the current business model, pet hospitals serve as the traffic entrance. With the help of outlet channels and brand endorsement, pet medical companies provide consumers with sales of medical products and services, including vaccination, disease diagnosis and treatment, and daily medical care. To relevant value-added services, including zoonotic disease prevention, pet cleaning, etc. China's pet medical industry is still in the early stage of demand enhancement. With the popularization of consumption, the industry still has great potential to tap.
Pet factions
The pet medical industry is far from real. Tan Wenjie, general manager of Ruipai Pets, told First Financial and Economics reporter: "On the one hand, compared with the United States, China ’s demand for pets still has a lot of room for growth. At present, the domestic pet raising rate in China is less than 10%, which is far lower 68% in the United States. On the other hand, as pet food changes from being full to eating well, consumer pet medical needs are constantly increasing. These two reasons will continue to develop the pet medical industry in China. "
Yang Jing, the person in charge of the promotion of Poqi.com, told reporters that there were not many excellent pet doctors in China before, and many pets became ill and might be abandoned or died. Now pet hospitals are everywhere, and pet disease treatment is guaranteed. At the same time, some pet owners have established the concept of "prevention comes first, treatment comes later". The market share of pet disease prevention medicines and health products has already ranked second behind pet staple foods.
Of course, although there are many pet hospitals at present, the industry is mixed, and the quality is difficult to guarantee. This has also led to the chain and branding of pet hospitals. In recent years, China's pet medical market has undergone tremendous changes. With the large-scale entry of capital, "chaining" has become a "significant word" in the pet medical industry. Several large-scale pet hospitals, including Ruipai Pets, rely on a steady stream of "capital ammunition" to speed up the country's siege and seize the market. The growth of large-scale pet hospitals has been entrusted by the industry with high expectations for improving the level of pet medical care and regulating the order of the pet medical industry.
At present, domestic pet hospitals have formed three major systems. According to the latest statistics of Pet Industry in 2018, China has more than 17,000 pet hospitals, of which Gao Ye Capital owns more than 700 pet hospitals through holdings or shares, and more than 400 operating hospitals under the former New Third Board Company Rui Peng (now delisted). Ruipai has more than 320 pet hospitals. The chain pet hospital system has maintained a three-point world structure for several years. The three major systems of Gaobang, Ruipeng, and Ruipai have more than 1,400 pet hospitals, accounting for more than 8%.
Recently, Gao Ye announced that Gao Ye Capital and Rui Peng Pet Medical Group signed an agreement, Gao Ye will “inject huge sums of money” into Rui Peng Group, and integrate Gao Ye ’s pet medical assets with Rui Peng. The three major medical factions will be further integrated into two major factions, and the rapid integration of the pet industry also shows the active capital of the industry.
Undercurrents of capital and lack of talent
The tuyere industry has never lacked the favor of capital, as has the pet medical industry.
According to data from Poqinet, the total pet financing in China in 2017 has exceeded 8 billion yuan, and more than 1.5 billion yuan specifically in the primary market. Among them, the amount of investment in the pet market that can be counted in the primary market exceeds 3.95. 100 million yuan. By 2018, capital activity has continued unabated.
The first financial reporter found that in the first half of this year, 5 of the 13 financings for the pet industry were related to pet medical, of which Ruipai Pet Hospital received 350 million from Huatai New Industry Fund, Goldman Sachs Group, and Tianjin Ruiji Bio The yuan strategic investment became the largest financing announced in the first half of the year. In addition to capital, a number of pet industry platform companies are also accelerating the deployment of pet medical services. For example, Poki, a one-stop service platform for pets, has reached a "strategic cooperation agreement" with Ruipai Pets, in which members of both parties can enjoy mutual benefits and share value-added services. Launch of retail cooperation model, supply chain cooperation, joint brand promotion, pet charity cooperation and other aspects of in-depth cooperation.
Tan Wenjie told reporters that capital and platform enterprises have provided guarantee for the development of Ruipai. Ruipai will continue to expand the scale and number of hospitals based on more than 300 hospitals through self-construction and mergers and acquisitions. However, Tan Wenjie also frankly told reporters that the lack of pet medical personnel is currently the biggest problem. Ruipai is cooperating with colleges and universities to promote the training of pet medical personnel.
At present, domestic veterinary talents are facing shortages in quantity and structure. The CICC Securities research report estimates that the overall talent demand for the pet industry is about 368,000. Currently, only about 77,000 licensed veterinarians and about 10,000 pass the examination each year. It is difficult to fill the short-term talent gap. At the same time, veterinary talent needs 2 to 5 years to train, but the proportion of employees under 35 in China reaches 85%, and there is a structural mismatch in talents. As a result, the outstanding talents are mostly concentrated in large enterprises. It is difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises to be guaranteed in talent reserves, and talent competition is at a significant disadvantage.
Even a large number of qualified veterinarians are not suitable for pet medical. Yang Jing told reporters that pet medicine is an industry that has only gradually emerged in recent years. Previously, China ’s veterinary talents were mainly cultivated for agriculture and animal husbandry. They are not good at pet medicine such as cats and dogs. There are three major categories. One is the veterinarians mainly trained in livestock treatment in the past, the other is the pet doctors trained by universities in recent years, and the last part is the pet doctors returned from overseas universities. Nevertheless, the situation of lack of talents is still severe, which also seriously restricts the expansion of pet hospitals in China and the improvement of medical standards.
In addition to the lack of talents, how to understand the health of pets in all aspects and prevent the occurrence of pet diseases is also a topic facing pet hospitals. In order to solve a series of problems, online and offline integration is becoming one of the measures for the pet medical industry to solve the medical resource shortage. Tang Yingzhi, the founder and co-CEO of Poqi.com, told reporters that the online-offline combination model can help the pet medical industry to more rationally allocate medical resources and make telemedicine and online consultation possible. For example, Poche has accumulated millions of medical cooperation cases in three years, which has accumulated relatively complete user needs and market supply and demand information. "We believe that the future pet diagnosis and treatment and health management will be a process of in-depth interaction between online and offline, and jointly completed." Tang Yingzhi said.
Xiang Yanjun, deputy general manager of Ruipai, said: "Collecting demand online and completing demand offline will be one of the main models of the pet medical industry in the future. In addition, it will cooperate with new retail cooperation, supply chain cooperation, pet insurance cooperation, etc. Pets The medical industry will continue to improve, and the shortage of pet medical resources is expected to improve. "