zazuu – Where are they now?
Brazil has one of the world’s largest pet care markets, generating billions of reais every year. Given the market’s size, you might expect it to be one of the best places to build a pet startup.
In many ways, zazuu—the subject of today’s article—is an example of that success. The all-in-one pet care service app allows pet parents to get essential pet services from the comfort of their homes.
zazuu joined us as part of our accelerator programme in 2024 as our first-ever Brazilian startup. Since then, they’ve grown to new heights, achieving a successful seed round and expanding to over 80 cities across Brazil.
We sat down with the founder and CEO of zazuu, Aline Lex, to learn more about their story.
A Lhasa Apso called Mel
Unlike many founders in our startup story series, Aline Lex didn’t originally envision her first venture in the pet industry. Having come from the finance world, she knew there were multiple avenues for solid businesses with great returns; child care, real estate and other entrepreneurial pursuits were all under consideration.
Then, in late 2019, Aline made a completely normal booking at a grooming salon for her Lhasa Apso, Mel, and the experience brought the antiquated ways of the pet industry into sharp focus.
“It was traumatising, rather than caring. Mel was terrified of all of the negative stimuli: strange noises, cages and the very stressful environment. Logistically, it was time-consuming too. It made me realise how old-fashioned [the pet service industry] was, when everything else in my life was much more digital and modern”.
And this was pre-2020, when at-home services were a staple in many lives of Brazilian people, but would become far more relevant in the following years.
Beyond solving Aline’s own wish for more convenient pet services, the market opportunity was a huge draw too.
“I realised Brazil was the third largest market in the world, both in terms of pet population and revenue. And it was beautiful not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively. So people were willing to spend more on their pets. There was a huge opportunity for doing something really innovative that would impact the entire pet market”.
So Aline assembled a team to build the first app and service: a mobile pet grooming service. The experience would be modern and seamless. All the pet parent would need to do is sign up for the app and book their pet’s grooming service. A professional groomer would then bring a zazuu truck to the client’s home, fully equipped with a bath and trimming tools needed to service pets large and small.
With a 2020 launch in the heart of São Paulo, it was one of the more challenging times to start such a service. But through word of mouth and growing demand, zazuu grew rapidly in the first year and multiplied the business ten times in the second year.
Expansion far and wide
Traction is the magic word when it comes to startup growth, and zazuu had no shortage of it. Initially, Aline took a bootstrapping approach to growing the business, investing her own capital in the pilot app and developing two grooming trucks.
“It was nice to see how open and keen people were to adopt this kind of service. So we had lots of clients come in organically, and we were able to retain these clients. So, this is one of the main advantages of the zazuu business: we have a very high lifetime value (LTV) compared to our cost of acquisition (CAC)”.
With this early traction as proof of concept, zazuu raised a successful pre-seed round in 2021/2022, which helped them expand.
The first expansion was their service offerings.
“Lots of the services that we launched throughout zazuu’s journey were because the clients were requesting them. So, for instance, we offer travelling certificates. That was a client’s idea. He was going to move to the US with his pet, and he needed someone to support him with the paperwork”.
This is how zazuu evolved from primarily bathing and grooming to offering veterinary consultations, vaccinations and medical tests, all from the client’s home. Expanding this way also increased the lifetime value of each client.
“We were able to cross-sell and upsell other services to our existing clients. So, someone who started only with bathing and grooming could then do the vaccines with us. Then, if a certain health issue came up, we could send a vet there, run the medical tests, such as blood tests, ultrasounds, ecograms, everything. We have this entire journey available from the zazuu app”.
Given the convenience of professionals going to the client’s home to conduct these services, it became an entire ecosystem that clients trusted. This led to a healthy client base of around 15,000 pets today, with 2,500 appointments running on a monthly basis.
The second expansion was geographic. Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world with a population above 200 million. ABEMPET estimates there are around 1.8 pets per residence, with 60 million dogs and 30 million cats.
Although São Paulo is one of Brazil’s economic hubs, it was a natural choice to expand to other cities by partnering with local professionals to deliver at-home pet care services under the zazuu umbrella. zazuu now serves 83 cities across 16 states.
zazuu is Unleashed
In 2024, zazuu joined the Unleashed by Purina startup programme for pet tech innovators. There, the team attended the onboarding week in Switzerland, where they met our Purina Unleashed Champs (industry and regional pet care experts) and their fellow startup cohort.
Reflecting on the experience, Aline said, “[Unleashed by Purina] was a great opportunity, both in terms of visibility and in terms of interaction with people from Purina and the other startups”.
This is also where zazuu’s collaboration with Purina Brazil started, which still stands today.
“We were able to develop several initiatives that would address nutrition for both vets and pet parents”.
Following their programme with us, zazuu continued to grow at an impressive rate, leading to an official first seed round in 2025.
Aline said, “That seed round in 2025 gave us the capability of executing our expansion and growth plan, increasing the number of cities with ongoing appointments by 70% in the last six months”.
Now with a team of 300 pet professional partners and 20 in-house staff, the growing zazuu team have completed 120,000 successful appointments. The primary service is still grooming in zazuu’s proprietary grooming trucks, but the second most popular is at-home vaccinations, followed by veterinary appointments. And this is a key indicator of how zazuu is evolving in its next phase.
What’s next for zazuu?
After zazuu’s wave of expansion in 2025, it would be tempting to sustain that pace into the next few years. But Aline prefers a sustainable rate of growth where quality and customer experience stays high.
“One of the things that sometimes holds us back is that we want to grow, but we want to be able to provide the same level of experience as the beginning. The same level of customisation and so on and so forth”.
To maintain quality, zazuu is highly selective about the professionals they partner with and has invested in further training to keep standards high.
With that in mind, Aline’s ambitions are to go deeper rather than wider.
“We think preventive care is the way to help pets live longer. So how do we do that? First is by seeing pets very often. We’re looking into preventative care plans and partnering with pet insurance”.
We at Unleashed have seen how pet insurance partnerships could bring great value to the customer and growth to the partnering companies, so this could be a fruitful next step.
The second partnership target is wearables.
“For now, what we are documenting is images of eyes, images of skin, images of things and we are treating them with AI to bring a little more visibility to things that would be silent. With a wearables partner, we can combine this data and help with faster diagnosis”, explained Aline.
And what about international expansion? With such a large home market, this is often the final step for Brazilian pet startups. However, Aline already has eyes on where she could grow the business next.
“We don’t have a clear vision of when, because Brazil is so big, but we see zazuu as a very good fit for the American market if we can find the right partners”.
With a proven model, a massive home market and ambitions that stretch well beyond Brazil’s borders, zazuu is a compelling example of what happens when convenience meets quality in pet care. We at Unleashed are excited to see where they go next.
Written by Olivia de Santos, Pet Tech Writer at Unleashed by Purina.
Texto – Aline Alex
