Digitail, a Romanian pet tech startup that automates admin at vet clinics, has raised an $11m Series A led by one of Europe’s largest VC firms, Atomico. It’s one of the largest Series A rounds in recent years in Romania’s young startup ecosystem, according to Dealroom.

What does Digitail do?

Digitail was founded in 2018 and serves both veterinarians and pet owners. The startup digitises the administrative tasks of vet clinics: from scheduling and record keeping to inventory management, invoicing and client communication. 

Pet owners can use the Digitail app to get medical summaries and communicate directly with their veterinarian. The platform also allows the sharing of data on animal health between different doctors, tracking the treatment progress in one place. It means that an animal might be treated by several doctors, in several clinics, and all its documentation is kept in one place.

The startup claims that its service reduces the administrative burden for a veterinarian by 40% to 60%, which is equivalent to around three days per month of admin at a typical vet clinic in the US. 

Digitail currently works with more than 750 clinics worldwide, serving around 1.4m pets. Its sales and customer support organisation is based in North America, while its product team is based primarily in Romania.

What’s the market like?

Pet ownership across the world is currently booming, and VCs have put big money into pet tech in recent years. A lot of the investment has gone to insurance startups — like the UK’s ManyPets (formerly Bought by Many), which raised a massive $350m funding round in 2021 — and animal nutrition. 

But only a few companies are creating services for veterinarians in Europe. In Europe, Spain’s Vetoclock and France’s Linkyvet are doing telemedicine for veterinarians. 

There are several smaller startups that provide services similar to Digitail (VetCloud in the UK, and PetDesk and TeleVet in the US) but Digitail’s founder and CEO Sebastian Gabor says he sees the startup’s main competitors as the companies aligned to big veterinary groups or pharmaceutical industry players through ownership or investment — so they’re less likely to access the entire veterinary marketplace. 

“We also see competition from legacy on-premise players who own the majority (up to 80%) of market share today, but we anticipate almost half of the industry will shift away from [that] in the next couple of years,” he adds.

Who invested in Digitail?

• Atomico, a UK VC, lead investor
• byFounders, a Danish VC
• Gradient, a US VC
• Partech, a US VC 

What’s next for Digitail?

With the fresh cash, Digitail will focus on expanding its market share in the US. It also wants to hire more people, to enforce its 40-strong team. 

When it comes to the product, the startup will focus on ensuring its platform can work at scale. At the same time, it will experiment with new infrastructure: additional services for animal hospitals, such as embedded finance and databases for veterinarians, where they can store their own data and pull insights.

The Series A pitch deck Digitail used to bag $11m

 Sifted’s take

The veterinary business so far has been slow to adapt to new technologies — and the experience of health clinics for humans, which have embraced plenty of digital solutions, show that there’s definitely room for improvement.

Many startups similar to Digitail, which help doctors that treat humans, not animals — such as Babylon, Kry and DocPlanner — have become international successes and unicorns. With the pet market growing around the world, Digitail has potential, and so far not that much competition, to follow in their path. 

Zosia Wanat is Sifted’s central and eastern Europe reporter, based in Warsaw. She tweets from @zosiawanat.