After the pandemic, a pet food shop's monthly sales rose from Tk 10 lakh to Tk 20-30 lakh, customers from 2 lakh to 6 lakh

A Daily Star report featured Pet Zone BD, which sells pet food and accessories online and through a physical store. The owner said demand for pet food, accessories and medicines rose, especially after the Covid-19 lockdown. In 2019 its food and accessory sales were Tk 10 lakh a month; in 2023 they reached Tk 20-30 lakh a month. Before the pandemic it served about 2 lakh customers; now around 6 lakh. The report says people increasingly treat cats, dogs, rabbits and birds as family members; one cat owner spends over Tk 3,000 a month on two cats, another spends Tk 5,000 a month on a dog. Business people estimate about Tk 200 crore of pet food and grooming products are sold in Bangladesh each year, with the market growing more than 20 percent a year. In the same trade, another online shop was started in 2017 by friends to earn pocket money; seeing the market grow, they began running it professionally, and sales are now 10 times what they were at the start. Another online shop's best sellers are cat food, litter and toys. An importer that began in 2000 selling about Tk 50,000 a month now sells about Tk 2 crore a month, though its chief executive says the sector, while growing, is still run in an unorganised way.