What a Million Meals of Pet Food Taught Me About E-commerce - Ravi Rathi, Blep

Here's a stat that should make you uncomfortable: one in two dogs is likely to get cancer over the age of 10. A third of all cats are prone to diabetes. And the food that's supposed to keep them healthy? It's heated to 250 to 300 degrees Celsius, held together by starch - which is essentially sugar - and in some cases can contain deceased animals. There are no regulations. Pet food in India is classified as fodder. The same rules that apply to cattle feed apply to what you're feeding your Labrador.

Ravi Rathi didn't know any of this until his German Shepherd Max got sick. Max was three years old, active, eating what Ravi thought was the best premium food at 9,000 to 10,000 rupees a month. Then Max gained weight, his hind leg stopped moving, and the vet diagnosed hip dysplasia - a condition that usually happens in older dogs. The vet said Max would be on mobility medicines for life. That's when Ravi flipped the back of the pack and started reading ingredient labels.

That curiosity became Blep Pet Food. Ravi spent eight months perfecting three recipes in his kitchen, tested them on 400 dogs, and launched in March 2023 with 500 fixed customers. Today, Blep has delivered over 2 million packets to 30,000 pet parents with a 12-person team and an 87% repeat purchase rate - a number that's honestly unheard of in the industry. Oh, and Max? He's eight years old now and no longer on mobility medicines.

This conversation covers how Ravi went from City Bank to political consulting to building a pet food company, why he eats his own product on camera, how quick commerce is democratizing D2C, and why the pet food market's real inflection point is still two to three years away.

Key Takeaways: Building a Pet Food Brand on Trust and Honesty

The Quality Problem Nobody Talks About:

• Pet food in India is classified as fodder - there are no food-grade regulations for it
• Commercial pet food is heated to 200-300 degrees and held together by starch, essentially sugar
• 1 in 2 dogs get cancer over 10, 33% of cats are prone to diabetes - and lifestyle isn't the problem
• Blep gets their food tested at Equinox Lab (same lab Whole Truth uses) to self-impose quality standards

The 87% Repeat Rate Formula:

• The team eats the food themselves on camera - every new recipe is taste-tested by humans first
• No-questions-asked replacement if there's any doubt about quality - "Don't ever risk your dog or cat's health for any doubt whatsoever"
• Brutally honest ingredients - what you see on the label is what's in the product
• The Zomato playbook: if there's a problem, resolve it immediately. One bad experience kills a lifetime customer

Omnichannel as a Trust Signal:

• Being on Amazon, Zepto, Blinkit, and Swiggy gives first-time buyers the comfort of a platform they already trust
• Quick commerce distribution has a bigger impact on sales than marketing budget
• The trade-off: website inventory turnover is 15 days, but quick commerce needs 2-3 months of inventory piled up

Q: You've been a banker, worked in defense tech, ran political communications, and now you're selling pet food. How does that even make sense?

Ravi Rathi: I would typically get classified as a jack of all trades. I did my economics honors from Delhi University, MBA from Goa Institute of Management. Started my career with City Bank. Then a digital marketing startup called Lead Forensics. For six years I was working with IPAC - that was political consulting, including running communications for the Punjab Chief Minister. Then for three years I was with Tata Advanced Systems in manufacturing. After that a public policy consulting firm.

I agree, and I say to many people around me that probably I was being trained to start something of my own. Banking, digital marketing, manufacturing, marketing and people management in IPAC, then consulting - broadly that has been my profile.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Jack of all trades isn't an insult when you're a founder. Every random career move is just another tool in the toolkit you didn't know you were building.

Q: Take us back to the moment with Max. What happened when he got sick?

Ravi Rathi: We come from a household that's had dogs for 24-25 years. Max is the fourth one. He's otherwise a very goofy fellow, eight years old today and still acts like a small puppy running around with his squeaky toys. But at 3 years, even though he was eating what we thought was the best food and he was very active, he gained weight, his hind leg stopped moving, and he developed hip dysplasia. Usually that happens when dogs are older.

The vet said to try getting his weight in control and for lifelong he would be on mobility medicines - just pain management, lubricate the joint, lesser pain. But my question remained very simple - we were buying the best food, then why should this happen? He's probably the fittest Rathi in the household. That's when the curiosity started. We Indians are very trusting of expert advice. We typically don't question why a medicine was prescribed or why someone suggests this food. That was my behavior too. But when we flipped the back of the pack and started reading ingredients, everything changed.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: The best businesses start when a trusting customer stops trusting and starts questioning. Max didn't just get sick - he broke Ravi's blind faith in labels.

Q: You perfected recipes in your kitchen. But you come from a pure vegetarian household. How did you manage non-veg recipes?

Ravi Rathi: I come from a typical veg household. My parents don't know that I eat non-veg. So that is the kind of veg household. Eventually in the name of Max I was given a free hand to experiment with food. We started feeding Max, his health got better. In fact I'm very happy to share that even at 8, he's not on mobility medicines. The vet said it would be lifelong medications and it might relapse, painful chapters would increase every passing year. Thankfully that has not happened.

So we first impressed Max, then went to our extended network of 300-400 dogs. Fed those 400 dogs, and only when people came with a chest-thumping yes did we get our confidence to start Blep. Broadly this happened till February 2023 and March is when we started full-fledged.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: 400 dogs said yes before Blep launched. That's not a beta test - that's a referendum.

Q: How did you find that initial network of 300-400 pet parents?

Ravi Rathi: I'll give due credit to my wife Swami. One of my achievements in life being I married right. She's one of the co-founders of Clovia, she has done well in her career. She knew a lot of people. So I piggy-backed on her network. There were certain groups she was a part of which had a lot of founders. She dropped messages on our behalf if someone would be willing to try.

The initial batch was prepared in our kitchen. We got it retorted for shelf life and then with a handwritten letter we shipped out ourselves to 400 people. The zero to one was that. We floated one Google form, followed up with people for feedback. I think in a way we were right place right time because people came with a lot of questions, a lot of enthusiasm - "Would you make this if we buy?" That became the starting point and we started with 500 fixed customers in March.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Handwritten letters and a Google form. Sometimes the zero-to-one isn't a growth hack. It's your wife's WhatsApp groups and a kitchen full of dog food.

Q: You bootstrapped for 3 years. What was the hardest thing about that journey?

Ravi Rathi: I am otherwise a very shy person. One of my friends told me to gulp down your ego. I won't call it ugly, but the difficult thing has been to digest whatever iota of self-respect, ego at times, particularly in a bootstrapped manner. You will have to go to vendors, you will have to negotiate, and most of the time negotiation doesn't happen with a heavy hand on the table. Most of the time it would be requests. I'm not a person who has typically made such requests, so that was difficult.

Second, our primary job is the customer should be happy. A good product is a good starting point but that doesn't solve the entire problem. If the delivery guys misbehave, that's Blep misbehaving with them. Some customers, maybe rightly so, can come down heavily. Self-respect just has to be gulped down. That's been my one big learning.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Bootstrapping doesn't just test your bank account. It tests your ego. The founders who make it are the ones who learned to swallow pride before they ran out of cash.

Q: 87% repeat purchase rate is unheard of in D2C. What's the secret?

Ravi Rathi: There is no secret sauce. We are brutally honest in our ingredients. What you see is what you buy. It is the quality of food that I have eaten on camera. If there is any new recipe that we develop, there are two-three people in the team including me who will eat it and taste it. So we know how all our recipes taste.

Second, I learned from platforms like Zomato - if a restaurant didn't deliver and I said the food didn't come, most of the times there was no question asked, refund happened. We adopted the same thing. If there's a challenge in logistics, if you think there's any quality question, you discard it and we'll send a fresh consignment. Don't ever risk your dog or cat's health for any doubt whatsoever.

Even on Big Basket or Swiggy, if there's an issue we say whatever you do at that end, resolve it, but we don't want you to have a bad experience with Blep. We are not here for one order. We want to be your lifetime supplier.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Eat your own product. Replace without questions. Think lifetime, not transaction. It's not a secret - it's just that most brands won't do it.

Q: There are no regulations in pet food in India. How do you handle quality standards?

Ravi Rathi: Technically pet food is classified as fodder. So whatever regulations exist for cattle feed would exist for dog food, which means there is nothing. But the idea being that we are not building for today - we are building for 2028, 2029, 2030. I'm sure regulations will come in soon.

So we get our food tested at Equinox Lab - Whole Truth gets tested there too. The idea is that we will set up our parameters of quality so high, we would hold ourselves accountable to that. So that's what we're trying to do.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: When there are no rules, the company that writes its own rules wins. By the time regulations catch up, Blep will already be the standard.

Q: You're omnichannel now - website, Amazon, Flipkart, quick commerce. What have you learned from being on all these channels?

Ravi Rathi: Omnichannel is the need of the hour. Any new customer who sees an ad on Meta for the first time might not feel comfortable ordering from Blep directly. But if Blep is available on Amazon, Zepto, Blinkit, Swiggy, that lends that much more credibility - "I'm not just dealing with Blep, I'm dealing with Amazon and Blep." That gives the comfort.

On quick commerce specifically, it's all about distribution. My availability will have a bigger impact on sales than my marketing budget. If you have winners that are selling well, you need to ensure the distribution is there. You need to ensure you can continuously and in a timely manner fulfill those purchase orders.

Quick commerce is also democratizing things for newer brands. The working capital, the power, the people, the distributors, the collection agents you'd need in traditional retail - quick commerce removes all that. It's like EVs versus ICE engines - even newcomers can now think of building a car.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: On quick commerce, distribution beats marketing. Your product in 200 dark stores does more than your product in 200 Instagram ads.

Q: What's the trade-off of being on all these channels?

Ravi Rathi: For the website we are highly optimized - our working capital turnover is 15 days. But if I want to be on Zepto, Blinkit, and Amazon, there's transit time to their warehouse, then their warehouse storage. So at least there's a pile-up of two to three months of inventory. That's a challenge to be managed.

But it adds a lot of credibility to the brand. Any new channel needs investment - both making people aware that you're available there, and the working capital increase.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: 15 days of working capital on your website vs 3 months on quick commerce. Omnnichannel isn't free - it's a deliberate cash flow trade for credibility.

Q: Reliance is coming in, Godrej is coming in. Is it a David versus Goliath story?

Ravi Rathi: Yes, it is David versus Goliath. But I think it's an era of Davids. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Pet adoption in the US is around 40-45%. In India we're hovering around 7-8%, increasing by 15% CAGR every year. People with more spending power are entering the market. The number of pets would double in next five years. And 85% of people feed at home - either for lack of budget or lack of quality.

I'm very happy that the big players are coming because a lot of education is needed in the market. It'll take a village. People say it takes a village to raise a child, so it will take a lot of companies for this education to percolate. The inflection point of the market would still be in 2027-28. You can't capture that inflection point if you don't start now.

Also, this is a category of very high trust. The consumer behavior is very similar to child food. People are very suspicious. They don't fully believe what you're saying. They look things up, try to understand. That trust takes time.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: 85% of pet parents in India still feed homemade food. That's not your competition - that's your total addressable market waiting for a product they can actually trust.

Q: How are you using AI at Blep today?

Ravi Rathi: I get a lot of ideas from AI. Just ask ChatGPT to act as an expert in different domains and a lot of eye-opening stats get thrown. We're using AI actively in customer query management. In social media, for drafting base strategy - AI has an important role.

I've gone from ChatGPT to Nano Banana Pro, and we're soon launching supplements for dogs in March. I'm very happy to share that 80% of that design happened on Nano Banana Pro. The world is changing. Things are happening way faster. And if you question the results of Gemini or ChatGPT enough number of times, they end up throwing the truth also eventually.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: 80% of a product's design done by AI. Not the marketing, not the copy - the actual product design. That's the new frontier for bootstrapped founders.

Q: What should a D2C founder know before they fundraise?

Ravi Rathi: You are bound to get a lot of nos. The number of yes would be far less than the number of nos - that's the inherent design of the system. But out of 100 pitches you just need one to say yes. So keep working diligently to find that one yes.

I have never lost my interest in another pitch because yesterday someone said no. The game is I need just three to four people to side with me for Blep to become a thousand crore revenue brand. That's how small the target is and it'll happen for everyone. So nothing to worry.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: 100 pitches, 1 yes. That's not a failure rate - that's a filter. The nos aren't rejecting you. They're self-selecting out.

Q: For someone thinking of taking the founder plunge, what's your advice?

Ravi Rathi: I had spent possibly eight months trying to perfect the three recipes we initially rolled out - chicken pumpkin, chicken broccoli, chicken zucchini. Those three recipes today also contribute 60% of the revenue every month. It's not about having 100 different solutions. Maybe we are a little slow in releasing new products, the jury is still out to evaluate us. But I feel the product should be very strong. Everything else will end up being a variable in life, and you can control everything if you have a good product. Rest will get solved with diligence and transparency.

Otherwise we are shy people. I will not get the confidence to say what I say about Blep if the product was not right. I remember the Top Gun dialogue where Tom Cruise turns and says, "I'll fly when I'm ready." I think I believe in that. Otherwise I'll lose my confidence.

🔥 ChaiNet's Hot Take: Three recipes, 60% of revenue, still going strong. The lesson? Nail three products before you chase thirty. Depth beats breadth when trust is your currency.

Final Thoughts: When the Product Does the Selling

Ravi's quality principle: "I will not get the confidence to say what I say about Blep if the product was not right."

The bottom line: Ravi Rathi's story is proof that in a market with zero regulations, the brand that self-imposes the highest standards wins. Blep doesn't need pet food regulations because they've already set their own bar higher than any regulation would require - testing at Equinox Lab, eating the food themselves on camera, and replacing without a single question asked. That's not marketing. That's conviction.

The 87% repeat rate isn't a hack or a playbook. It's the result of choosing honesty over speed at every single decision point. Three recipes for eight months before launch. Handwritten letters with the first 400 samples. A 12-person team doing 2 million packets because breaking point hasn't been reached when the team believes in what they're building.

For D2C founders in any category, the takeaway is counterintuitive but powerful: slow down on your product count, speed up on your product quality. In a world where everyone is racing to launch 50 SKUs, Blep's three original recipes still do 60% of the revenue. The pet food market's inflection point is 2027-28. The brands that will capture it are the ones building trust right now - not the ones building product lines.

Q: How can people connect with you and learn more about Blep?

Ravi Rathi: You can find Blep on our website and across all major platforms - Amazon, Flipkart, Zepto, Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart. We're launching dog supplements in March. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn - we're always happy to connect with pet parents who have questions about what they're feeding their dogs and cats.

Final words: Ravi Rathi's German Shepherd Max was supposed to be on mobility medicines for life. Today, at eight years old, Max runs around like a puppy. That transformation didn't come from a vet or a fancy supplement - it came from a founder who stopped trusting labels and started reading them. Blep exists because one dog got sick and one person asked why. In a market where 85% of pet parents still feed homemade food because they can't trust what's in the pack, that question is worth billions. But the real lesson here isn't about market size or repeat rates or quick commerce strategy. It's about a shy guy from a vegetarian household who learned to gulp down his ego, cook non-veg in secret, and ship handwritten letters to 400 strangers because he believed their pets deserved better food. If your product is strong enough that you'd eat it yourself on camera, everything else is just execution.