About Us

Anvis Inc. was established in 2010 with the sole aim of ‘Simplifying Pet Care’ for the discerning Pet Parent.

It started with our founder, Anand Vishwanath, a Telecom Engineer, taking a sabbatical from his corporate life of 12+ years and started the dog walking as a very informal service – as a way to do ‘something he was extremely passionate about’. One thing led to another, after a bit of research on survival and sustainability, Anand quit his corporate job for good, got himself trained and certified as a behaviourist under the very experienced John Rogerson of ‘Northern Centre for Canine Behaviour, UK’ and Anvis Inc. was born!

We started connecting with like-minded pet passionate people (read Family & Friends) who loved pets and wanted to spend time with them.

They were on the lookout to walk one, maybe two doggies, enjoy playing & spending time as a stress buster more than anything else. And then there were Pet Parents requesting for a ‘Dog Person’ to help out with caring for their dogs when work and other commitments kept them busy. We played the happy matchmaker and just like that our ‘Dog Walking’ service was born!

At the peak, we were walking 217 dogs every single day all across Bangalore!

The Pet Parents whose dogs we were walking reasoned that since their dogs were very comfortable with us and vice versa, it would make sense for them to board their dogs with us when they would travel.

Between us (family and Friends), fortunately we had space to accommodate one or two dogs in our own homes and so a very unplanned, but enjoyable ‘Home Boarding’ service started! 

There were some others who felt we should just stay in their homes and care for their dogs (and in some cases cats, birds, fish too.!) so they didn’t have to move the dogs/cats/ other critters out of their familiar surroundings. And before we knew it, our ‘Pet Sitting’ services was born! 

Some other Pet Parents asked us if we could conduct birthday parties for their pets or get together a group of people for a ‘Pet-together’ 🙂 and that’s how our ‘Pet Events’ started.

We conducted quite a lot of Pet events including Pet Birthday parties, Homecoming parties, Pool parties, Parties in and for residential communities, managed pet events for corporates and even had a few weekend ‘resort outings’ where we took up entire pet friendly resorts, filled the weekend with pet and pet parent friendly games, trekking,bonfiree, the works and loads and loads of fun!

One such Pet Parent whose dog we were walking, asked us to relocate his dog outside of India since they were relocating. Since our understanding of the International Pet Relocation service was very limited., we were very reluctant to take it up. However, the Pet Parent said he just wanted us to be with his pet since he and his dog was most comfortable with us.

To be honest, the pet parent (and his agents) did most of the work and we were just around with the doggie. Imagine our joy when we actually also got paid a ‘Service Fee’ for just being able to keep the dog’s stress and anxiety under check. Of course, now we realise that this plays a big part while transporting pets but back then, we were just having fun being with the doggie and getting rewarded too. Talk about positive reinforcement! 

One thing led to another and before we knew it, International Pet Relocation started taking precedence over the rest of services just by the sheer amount of time, effort, complexities & challenges involved. We had no choice but to spin it off as a separate company to give it the right kind of focused attention and Anvis Pet Relocation was born!

As of date, we have relocated over 2,500 pets across 125+ countries covering 6 continents. (Antarctica seems to be one continent that seems to be evading us!)

While we were happy that our little hobby that we were calling a business was growing into a nice big family, we started noticing challenges that would have us making decisions that we weren’t ready for.

Long story short, we were not happy with the quality and standard of service we were providing and went ahead and shut down the walking service in 2015 after nurturing and growing it for 5+ years at the point of breakeven!

We believe the decision to close the business was actually quite easy. We always wanted to provide quality service – gold standard, if you will, for our four-legged friends. But with the haze of ‘opportunity’ and ‘scaling’ and ‘funding’, we were losing sight of the mission we started off with.  The whole show of running a 100+ member team started becoming pointless. Either we (Pet Parents/Pet Lovers) needed to be personally walking the doggies or we need to replicate people like us. Between keeping our passion alive or managing expectations and aspirations of the walkers – only to be able to churn out mediocre services, we knew this was the best decision we had taken!

While we closed down the Dog walking service and focussed our attention to Pet Relocation and Pet Boarding, it kept nagging us that there are many Pet Parents who really need this, and other services and it would actually benefit the pets most. Should the cultural mismatch force us to shut for good? We had gathered so much data and faced so many challenges of running a Dog walking/ Pet Sitting service in India. We had not just survived but also come on top. And somewhere we saw this quote by Thomas. A. Edison ‘I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’ This was just the inspiration we needed!

So off we went to the drawing board to figure out a solution. Over the course of time, we had realised that pet services cannot be grown as typical “business”. It requires pet passionate people who put the safety and comfort of the pets in their care – as the top-most priority for it to completely benefit the pets.

It took us 2+ years to come up with a model we feel will work for everybody – especially the pets. We are calling this version 1.1. The current concept is to bring back the quality of service that we initially envisioned and were providing (with Friends and Family) when we started – which is what really benefits Pets and Pet Parents alike.

 So, in our current version, we are duplicating the friend-family success model with a small tweak.

First, we identify Pet lovers/Pet Parents who are willing to provide pet services not only Dog Walking but Pet Sitting, Pet (Dog & Cat) Boarding, Puppy Training, Pet Relocation and any other services for the love of pets rather than as a job or a chore – either full-time or part time.

• We then invite them to take up certification courses via our Pet Academy where we are not only share our experiences, vision, mistakes of the past but also invite guest trainers who are top professionals in their specialised fields, and they can share their experiences as well.
• Once the course is completed, we are also test these aspiring Pet Professionals on their understanding of the concepts to ensure they are able to demonstrate they are in sync with our ideologies, methodologies and most importantly care for the pets in a safe and professional manner.
• Post all this is when the Pet professionals are then available to care for any pet. A Pet Parent can search and find the best PetProfessionall on our platform with the assurance of a Pet lover who is also a professional and has been verified and/or trained by the experienced Anvis Team.

As of Nov 2020, we have trained over 220 pet lovers turned professionals who are providing various Pet Services in Bangalore and a few in Delhi & Mumbai regions.

We hope this could be the solution for the millions of pets in India that need to be exercised, pampered and loved.  Not that we can ever replace a pet parent but we believe this is the closest we can get - A premium service to support the hardworking and time-conscious pet parent who is fighting life’s complexities in order to provide a great life for their furry companions and want nothing but the best for them !