Video transcript: The future of the vet industry – VET-AI
Transcript for the video embedded on the Support for small businesses page.
[Paul Hallett, CEO and Co-founder of Vet-AI appears on the screen]
Paul: VETAI is a technology business. There are kind of two arms to it.
The first one is Joii Pet Care, which is a telemedicine application. You can see a vet inside five minutes and a vet will diagnose 70% of the time online. So that’s one part of the business.
[Various shots show Paul presenting to a group in Nexus at the University of Leeds]
The other part of the business is more on the insights and data that’s collected. And ultimately how we use those to influence future industry.
[Various shots show Paul chatting to people in Nexus]
We started with Nexus before Nexus was even built. When we met Martin who is the director of Nexus in a coffee shop. I was overhearing his ambition and plans for Nexus. And I followed him out and asked him if we could be his first tenant, and here we are today.
[Various shots show people working in the VET-AI offices]
The business has achieved a hell of a lot in the last four years. Massive scale. Today we sit on 300,000 pet owners or thereabouts. We’ve serviced maybe 170,000 consultations now in Joii. We’ve got two Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and one in the pipeline with the University.
What Nexus has done to our proposition is it’s given us a robust platform, to scientifically validate what we were going to build.
I mean, the growth in the business is quite extraordinary. We’ve gone from 0 employees to 110 today.
[Various shots show Paul chatting to people in Nexus]
Regarding fundraising, with £12.3 million raised to date. And we’ve brought in some really interesting strategic partners into the boardroom to help build the future of pet care together.
Nexus has been a big support in a number of different ways. I would say talent; access to talent from design and from the Business School. Having access to academics has been massive for us as we built the foundations for the future of the industry.
I also think it’s a great place to network, and we’ve met other entrepreneurs here. People from the council, from the government, big stakeholders in ultimately the innovation strategy for not just Leeds but the UK.
I’d say the best thing about being part of the Nexus community is the collaboration effect. The kind of mix of minds, if you like. And there’s a fusion there, that’s quite special actually, when you start acknowledging each other as stakeholders and building a kind of combined strategy for success.
[The Nexus logo appears on the screen]