Five questions for Ravi Sharma, CEO of PoochPlay

What does your business do?

PoochPlay is a dog activity monitor and wellbeing-management app that aims to cover all aspects of dog health and safety. PoochPlay recommends diet and activity plans tailored to your dog based on breed, health, weight, sex and age. The app tracks how active the dog has been and provides a personalised plan to suit its movements.

What's been your company's greatest achievement so far?

Bringing our game-changing device to market. We didn't want to create a toy that just tracks exercise levels, we wanted to make an ecosystem that helps owners take care of their dog's complete wellbeing, effortlessly. We knew that the value for owners would be in creating a device that could capture and translate data into something that could improve a dog's health, so that's what we did.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Part of programming the app involved creating the world's largest database of dog food and all its nutritional content. That was a huge undertaking, but one we didn't shy away from. Synching this food data with the activity level captured by the tracker lets the app calculate exactly how much food a dog really needs. Exercising and feeding correctly can add up to two years to a dog's life. Considering our love of dogs, this brought us immense joy.

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What are your plans for hitting your targets this year?

We have great relationships with dog-food companies because we provide dog owners with the most accurate feeding guidelines. We're looking to develop these partnerships further this year, which will help us to hit our targets.

What's the one piece of advice you'd give fellow entrepreneurs?

The three-word mantra that kept me going was "Hope. Patience. Belief". Starting a business is like having a child. It will keep you up all night, it will be hard work and it won't be easy if you don't love it but in the end it will be worth it. It will make you happy like nothing else ever will.