banabirak.com, launched in June 2018 by Aykut Önen and Öznur Doğan, allows pet owners to meet dog walkers, boarders, training and pet taxi service providers. You can also search by city and province at banabak.com, as well as filters such as pet age and weight.
By visiting the profiles of the caretakers you have reached through the search results, you can get information about them and access information such as the coverage of the services they provide or the districts they serve. In the meantime, caretakers can change the services provided according to their pet type, as mentioned in their profiles. For example, a caretaker who provides visiting services for a cat can also offer a service for dog walking.
As we mentioned above on the platform, it is also possible to find valuable services for animal lovers such as pet taxis and boarders. banabirak.com also has a section to evaluate the boarders or caretakers. In this section you can give stars to the service providers and you write a comment about them.
It is also worth saying that there are daily and hourly fees in the caretakers’ profile.
The development and design process was undertaken by the partner Aykut Önen. Having more than 10 years of experience with a content management panel and a management panel she has set up for this job, Önen says the site theme has been purchased but some changes have been made.
The duo expressed that their commitment to software development and communication strategy for the website took about 5 months, which they have done in the time left, next to their full-time jobs. banabirak.com is actually working without any profit aim since the first day it opened. The founders of the startup see this platform as a listing service for caretakers and animal owners for the time being.
Until September, the duo, who did not do any advertisement, said they managed to get over 50 caretakers signed up with only mouth to mouth advertising. In fact, one of the reasons for the late launch of the advertising campaign was to see if the system really works. The banabirak.com team, which has shared only a few posts on Facebook groups about pets, said they have encountered more positive feedback than they expected.
There are 84 approved caretakers, and 23 caretakers waiting for approval on the system. A great majority of these caretakers are in Istanbul, but the platform is also of interest to Ankara, Izmir, Adana, Bursa and even Erzurum. One of the interesting data about the platform is that 40 percent of the caretakers are university students. This shows how the new generation can be quickly adapting to different business lines.
Even though banabirak.com is a good idea, it has serious rivalry both on the application market and on the web. The most powerful rival of the startup is Petsurfer, while on the application side there is DoggoApp, which has not been published yet but will be ready soon.
Aykut Önen and Öznur Doğan think that the competition will help the market grow. The duo will add new features to the platform to separate it from its rivals.
In the first phase, they plan to make improvements in fields such as the platform reservation system, security studies (insurance, identity verification, etc.) and they will work on a wider scale afterwards. For example, animal owners will be able to track their dogs location-based from a mobile application when they receive dog walker services.
The founders mentioned that there are not a lot of features that can be developed. Apart from individual caretakers, the team also aims to offer a wider range by including institutional members such as petshops, vets, boarders.
In addition, Aykut Önen and Öznur Doğan, founders of the startup, which currently does not earn any income from this service, expressed that they think on two different income models. The duo, who undergoes a serious evaluation of the caretakers on the platform; wants to switch to a system that will provide an insurance for the pet and caretakers in the future.
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