Modern Animal, which bills itself as a new kind of veterinary company, recently raised $75 million in a Series C round led by Addition. Modern Animal combines on-site clinics with a subscription service to pet owners, which gives them 24/7 access to vets and vet technicians by phone, video, or text. It also provides them with digital tools for making appointments and keeping track of their pet's medical history. Steven Eidelman, founder & CEO of Modern Animal, joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.

Vet Startup Modern Animal Raises $75 Million

modern animal which bills itself as a new kind of veterinary company recently raising 75 million in a series C round led by edition. Well the company offers a subscription service to pet owners which gives them 24 7 access to vets and vet technicians by phone, video or text. It also provides them with digital tools for making appointments and keeping track of their pets medical history. And joining me now, Stephen Eidelman, founder and Ceo of modern animal Stephen, thanks so much for coming on. So talk to me more about your company and how you're trying to shake up this space. Hi Kristin. Yeah, thanks for having me. So we've been building now for almost four years uh really the goal to build a fully vertically integrated veterinary care provider, the most progressive veterinary care provider um in the country to redesign how people access and deliver veterinary care. So for us what that means is uh you know, building all of our own technology, building our own clinics from scratch with the goal of really eliminating a lot of the friction and the obstacles that get in the way of the relationship between a pet owner and their veterinarian. And so with that really ultimately allowing them to practice great medicine because that's ultimately what he wants to be able to access. So I know um obviously for some animals vaccination shots they're part of the process, How does that work in this sort of virtual setup? Do they get kind of like a prescription or basically even a notice to go get a shot for the animal somewhere. Yeah, so we do everything. So we do the virtual piece and we still we are building the actual clinics. So that's been one of the biggest issues as we've looked to. How do we innovate within this industry? That has been really stuck uh you know for decades building these traditional clinics without any technology and we've seen telemedicine during Covid really become quite popular in human health care as well as in veterinary care. We've actually built a model that integrates both. And so we we build clinics from scratch that you can access. We have five clinics right now in California for in Los Angeles, our first one just opened in san Francisco. So you can go to any as a member, you go to any clinic that modern animal has in your area and you can access us through our app 24 7 via chat via video, you can book your appointments in the app and so it's all really integrated. And that's the key is to break down these barriers that create a gap in care and make it hard to access care as a pet owner. How important is the relationship building for people and their pets? Of course I know for humans, right, you all want to we all want to form a good relationship with our doctor have that go to doctor. How crucial is that in the pet space? It's really critical if you think about your your pet of which, you know, now we have more than ever americans have pets, you know, three quarters of millennials now have pets after covid, 50% of american households added pets during covid. So, you know, we're looking at, you know, it's a way of life in America and most pet owners when they go to the veterinarian, they're speaking on behalf of the animal, of course, right, the animal can't say I need, you know, a vaccine or I'm feeling sick and this is what hurts. So there's a lot of anxiety in those moments, you know, the communication between the veterinarian and the pet owner is critical to be able to get to the root cause of the issue. And there's a lot of other considerations that with human medicine we oftentimes don't have in addition to just the communication gap, we have financial concerns, you know, unlike in human health care, we don't have Medicare, Medicaid, we don't have employer subsidized healthcare insurance. And so there's always this financial anxiety that is playing a big role. There's also the communication gap and oftentimes, you know, it might be midnight your pet's vomiting, do you rush off to the er and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours waiting in the waiting room or can you wait and see how, how things progress overnight. So that was really what inspired a lot of creating this integrated model is to facilitate that communication, whether it's you're on the couch at home, you're in bed and your pet wakes up is, you know, is coming to bother you while you're sleeping and you're trying to decide in that moment is this critical? Because sometimes these things can be life threatening situations and other times it's just a matter of, you know, the pet passing whatever is happening and we all love our pets dearly. I think that's for sure, steven. Many people treat them really like their own humans, write their own companions as the founder and Ceo of modern animal, your company, what are the expansion plans from here? Yeah, so we've raised nearly 200 million in capital at this point. So we opened our first clinic right out as COVID was starting in April 2020 and right away saw tremendous demand. So we had a wait list up for our first clinic for most of its existence. And we actually have all of our Los Angeles clinics are on a wait list. So we have seen, you know, overwhelming demand and with that we've we've been able to raise capital to continue building out all of our our technology and to continue building clinics to serve our communities here in California. We're, you know, we're using that capital to build uh to build a lot more clinics that serve a lot more pet owners. We have plans to expand rapidly in Los Angeles and in the Bay Area and more to come from there as well. All right, Stephen Eidelman, founder and Ceo of Modern Animals, Stephen congrats and thanks so much for coming on.