The founders of London-based startup Omni – which makes plant-based pet food – bagged £75,000 from two investors on Dragons’ Den UK last night.
Plant-based food continues to succeed on the small screen, with dog food maker Omni becoming the latest vegan company to win over investors on TV.
Guy Sandelowsky and Shiv Sivakumar, who founded the pet nutrition startup in 2020, appeared on the UK edition of Dragons’ Den on Thursday night and struck a joint deal with Deborah Meaden and Steven Bartlett.
The famous investors agreed to pour £75,000 into the startup in exchange for a collective 2.5% equity stake, valuing the vegan dog food business at £3M.
“I had already been looking for a healthy, balanced alternative to processed-meat dog food, so when Guy and Shiv presented Omni and its credentials as a highly nutritional, vet-formulated choice, I was bound to invest. Trust in a product is hugely important to dog owners,” said Meaden.
“The big test came, though, after the den, when I offered the food and treats to my pack of dogs, and they literally woofed them down – that certainly sealed the deal,” she added.
Omni’s pet food pitch on Dragons’ Den
Omni sells a range of vet-formulated foods and supplements for dogs, such as No-Chicken Pot Pie, No-Beef Casserole, breath supplements, and Training Treats for physical and mental health. The products are catered to pets with sensitivities, allergies, anxiety, and gut issues, among others.
Sandelowsky and Sivakumar began thier pitch asking for £75,000 for a 1% stake in Omni. “I’m a small-animal vet that’s been in practice for just shy of 10 years, and I’ve seen a number of nutrition-related diseases in our pets,” Sandelowsky explained.
“At Omni, we believe that novel proteins – like those derived from yeast, pules, algae, and soon lab-grown meat – can be healthy and as delicious as traditional meat-based diets,” he added.
The company generated over £2.5M in sales in 2022 and 2023, and 80% of its 30,000-strong customer base are subscribers. It has delivered more than five million meals to pets globally.
Peter Jones questioned the £7.5M valuation set by Omni’s founders, and Sivakumar responded by laying out the business’s forecast for the upcoming 12 months, when it expects to become profitable. He added that the startup had recently secured £2M in VC funding at a valuation of £10M. But Jones was still unconvinced and exited the discussions.
The entrepreneurs were met with similar scepticism by Touker Suleyman, who wanted a stake of 30%. “You’re delusional about what this is really worth,” he said. “So I’m out.”
Another Dragon, Sara Davies, praised the founders and their pitch, and didn’t feel the valuation was outlandish. But she wasn’t sold on the project enough at the terms being asked of the investors, and took herself out of the running.
‘Wealth and experience’ of Dragons worthwhile
But Meaden and Bartlett were impressed by Omni’s lifetime value of customers – while their cost of acquisition is around £40, repeat rates have meant its customers spent £400 each in just two years.
Meaden made the first offer, asking for 3% of the business – which was matched by Bartlett. The founders then went to discuss, whispering: “That’s basically the two dragons that we wanted.”
Sandelowsky and Sivakumar asked if the two investors would like to join forces and come in at a 2.5% stake. After some deliberation, the Dragons agreed to the deal.
“Through the jubilation of hearing a Dragon say: ‘I believe in you,’ there’s an undercurrent of feeling that you have to now give away a large part of your business – something that we have spent years building, only to give away quite a substantial portion of it after a couple of minutes in the Den,” Sivakumar said.
“Ultimately, we felt the wealth of expertise and guidance brought by the Dragons was definitely worthwhile,” he added. “The experience, to us, really affirmed how much we complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses, both driven by a passion to really revolutionise pet nutrition.”
Speaking to the Daily Express, Sandelowsky said: “We were happy with the result, the number that we arrived at, I think it could potentially be one of the highest valuations for a pet food business.”
Cultivated meat and ‘Ozempic for dogs’
The pitch also revealed Omni’s plans for the future – the founders are targetng an exit in the next three to five years, the hope being that it is acquired by a bigger pet food company for around £150M.
The startup has also hinted that it’s developing a natural weight loss powder for dogs, which it has teased as “Ozempic for dogs” – this effort would be helped by the involvement of Bartlett, who has a stake in several health and wellness companies, including peronalised nutrition app Zoe.
The episode aired the same day news broke that Brits can buy cultivated chicken for their pets starting Friday, with food tech startup Meatly joining forces with vegan pet food maker The Pack to launch dog treats with hybrid meat.
But a year ago, Meatly had teamed up with Omni to co-develop cat food too, prototypes of which were showcased on Dragons’ Den. It remains to be seen whether this partnership will materialise in the market.
Either way, it is a big moment for cultivated pet food across the globe, with multiple companies eyeing regulatory approval for thier novel proteins in the US and Singapore.
Omni’s investment on Dragons’ Den also comes as more and more future food startups find success on the show and its sister programmes across the world. In the last year, for example, Meat the Mushroom and Finneato Fysh Foods have both won deals on Shark Tank US for their plant-based meat and seafood, respectively, while vegan bakery brand The Cinnamon Kitchen found success on Shark Tank India.
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