Dr Guy Sandelowsky and Shiv Sivakumar are not your average co-founders. Having launched UK-based vegan pet food company Omni in 2020 during COVID, the pair had yet to meet in person.

It was Sandelowsky’s housemate, looking to join a tech firm, who had forged the introduction via the workinstartups.com website after he noticed that Sivakumar, an investment banker, was searching for a business partner with veterinary experience.

“It’s almost like the founder equivalent for Tinder. Not for dating but looking for co-founders,” smiles Sandelowsky.

The pair initially conducted meetings on video calls before they finally met in person in 2022. “It was quite unusual and finding a founder is hard enough, but when you don't know each other at all it was quite risky,” he adds. “But it has worked out and we have complimentary skills."

Since its launch in 2022, Omni has sold over 1 million vegan dog food meals, surpassed £2.5m in revenue and is on track for £4m, more than double the growth in the first two years.

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“I am somebody who really loves pets and dogs in particular and wanted to dedicate my career to helping them in shape or other,” says the Hampstead-based vet turned business owner.

“I soon realised that a lot of things we do as vets is that treatment was one thing, but we aren't very good at prevention.”

Having seen over 30 pets a day as a vet, Sandelowsky felt that nutrition was an untapped area to prevent a lot of the problems he was seeing on a daily basis.

“Be it joint problems, skin issues relating to allergies or gut problems relating to sensitivities. All these things were facing me every day,” he says.

It is over 10 years since Sandelowsky qualified from Nottingham Vet School with an advanced qualification in small animal surgery. In 2022, he graduated from Imperial College Business School with an MBA, which started just as Omni was getting off the ground. “It was important to have the clinical grounding and to enact that in the business world,” he says.

In late 2023, Onni gained an early foothold when it was stocked in one of the biggest pet retailers in Europe, German-based Fressnapf. This year the pet-food producer released the first chewable vegan supplements to help a range of issues dogs regularly face, including anxiety, which has seen a notable rise among "pandemic pets" whose owners have returned to the office.

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According to Sandelowsky, owning a medium-sized dog produces double the environmental impact of running an SUV such as a Toyota land cruiser.

“The awareness around how much having a dog entails is growing,” he adds. “Up to 20% of global meat production is estimated to go into pet food eventually. If we are able to shift that so that almost no meat use in pets diet, the amount of land and water saved could be colossal.”

Omni, meanwhile, has turned its attention to cats after launching, in March, what it claims to be the first cans of cat food made with cultivated chicken. Hailed as Britain’s first lab-grown meat, Omni partnered with UK-based Meatly, a cultivated meat company.

“That technology is not simple and we didn’t feel we could sell and make the ingredients,” says Sandelowsky. “It’s like a chicken breast growing in a vertical vat and it grows infinitely from a tiny number of cells which could make kilos of meat.”

Outside of the vats, Omni raised over £1m in a 2022 funding round and last year beat a record for its category after breaking its £400,000 crowdfunding target in 15 minutes on the Seedrs platform.

“In the early stages of a pet nutrition business it is important to get investment, as consumers are seeing you are a choice,” says Sandelowsky.

“We have been venture capital (VC) backed from the early stages and our ambition is to become a household brand. We think it's time for a novel protein brand to be out there.”

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Omni customer letters are also part of the reason, admits Sandelowsky. “It is one of the most satisfying parts of the project,” he adds. “When people email to say they would never have got a dog if you didn’t exist and use it in a science backed way, that their pets aren’t itching anymore or ears are no longer full of wax, for a vet that is very satisfying.

"I feel like I am having a clinical impact even though I am not in the operating room. But I am still trying to help pets and their guardians. That’s the ultimate mission.”

Behind the brand: Co-founder/CEO Guy Sandelowsky on…

Consumer education

A lot of people still don’t know that dogs can eat these diets. There is a consumer education piece there which costs money. Because our products are good we are now getting growth through referral and word of mouth. It has been a very effective way to grow. Having impact does require having a large share of voice. There is competition and marketing is expensive.

Online retail

With pet food, selling direct to consumers online is really convenient. Your millennial pet parent doesn’t want to be driving every four weeks to pick up food and makes more sense to have it on subscription.

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