VetVerifi launches SmartTag™, partners to bring verified vaccination infrastructure directly into the vet workflow
For years, dropping a dog off at a boarding facility meant calling your vet to get its records, printing out a stack of vaccine records, driving across town to drop them off, and hoping nothing got lost in the shuffle.
That frustration led David Servodidio, CEO and co-founder, to build what he describes as data credentialing for the pet economy.
“It’s the classic story of the day before family vacation. I’m dropping my dog off for boarding. I print out a PDF of vaccine records and walk it into the pet resort,” said Servodidio. “And the dog’s vet is literally across the street, yet somehow the records don’t automatically talk to each other.”
Celebrating its fifth year in business, VetVerifi recently launched SmartTag™ and partnered with AllyDVM and MWI Animal Health.
Making the invisible tangible
SmartTag is a connected pet tag that allows vets, boarding facilities, groomers and pet owners to instantly verify vaccination records with a simple scan — accessible anywhere, in real time using their VetVerifi infrastructure.
The idea, Servodidio said, came from recognizing that the pet industry’s record-sharing problem was never really a software problem.
“Fundamentally, this is a data integration and connectivity problem,” he said. “It’s not a UI problem. It’s not an app that’s needed here. It is a back-end system-to-system verification problem. If we approached it that way, we could really change the way the pet economy allows its consumers to move around the world with their pets.”
SmartTag is the most visible expression of that infrastructure to date. The tag ships in a branded box, is customizable with a clinic’s logo and gives staff something physical to interact with. Sevodidio explained that this tangible aspect has been critical, as the vet industry can be a bit old school when it comes to adopting out new tech.
VetVerifi sells the tags directly to vets and also makes them available to individual pet owners through its website for $30.
Outside of the tag, VetVerifi’s infrastructure is invisible. Everything the company builds is white-labeled, meaning pet owners interacting with the technology typically experience it through their vet or their boarding facility’s software, never knowing VetVerifi is powering it underneath.
“We are a middle that enables the pet economy to share data. We’re currently white-labeled at about 12,000 vets,” Servodidio said.
The partnership
The tag launch is paired with an expanded partnership with AllyDVM, a veterinary client communication platform, and MWI Animal Health, one of the country’s largest animal health distributors.
Together, the three companies aim to embed VetVerifi’s vaccine verification infrastructure more deeply into the daily workflows of veterinary teams.
“A veterinary practice can now see exactly when a pet is heading to boarding, grooming or daycare and proactively identify a vaccine need before it becomes a last-minute request,” the company said. “Historically, clinics have had zero visibility into that demand, and zero influence to protect that revenue before it leaks elsewhere.”
Growing the Tennessee ecosystem
VetVerifi was the first investment made by Knoxville-based Market Square Ventures. The company is also part of the LaunchTennessee portfolio.
Servodidio is very proud of these local ties, but did admit that fully funding their seed round required resources outside of the state. From his perspective, for companies past the pre-seed stage, the capital needed to scale is often not yet present in Tennessee outside of a few key industries like healthcare or nuclear.
But, he’s on a mission to change that. VetVerfi was his way of reversing the script and attracting capital to Tennessee.
“When you need a $2 million to $10 million type of fundraise, you’re looking around and asking, where are they? Are they here in Tennessee?” he said. “We were able to be a company that brought outside firms in and be their first Tennessee investment. That’s something I take great pride in as well.”
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