Bark Street is a haven for all dogs. We aim to extend our love for K-9s beyond the walls of the cafe and make our people feel connected to a network close to home, to find easy solutions to make sure your dog lives his best life, be it food, friends, experiences, or services.
Incubees: Tell us about your product or services.
Nikhil Pratap Singh: Bark Street is a dog-friendly cafe based in Noida. What started as a desire to create an inclusive environment for doggo-human socialization, has taken shape into a much larger vision of creating value among a community.
We understand that taking care of a dog entails a lot of research and effort to make sure they get the best food, healthcare, grooming, and more. Through us, our patrons get access to the best of these services from the comforts of their homes. Our little cafe is the haven for all-things-dog. Designed to pamper dogs and their owners with a delicious gourmet menu and a cafe experience that will keep you coming back again and again!
Incubees: What makes your product/services unique and what competition do you see in India and globally?
Nikhil Pratap Singh: Our vision is to create an inclusive environment for all dog lovers. We want to create, enable and drive a community of dog lovers to have access to the best facilities for their best friends. We aim to extend our love for K-9s beyond the walls of the cafe and make our people feel connected to a network close to home, to find easy solutions to make sure your dog lives his best life, be it food, friends, experiences, or services.
We do it all. We went into a research phase for months on end. We researched the entire market, offline and online, and went to every place in Delhi NCR, which was even remotely pet friendly because we wanted to learn from the mistakes made by others. So one thing was common amongst them: they were all focusing on humans more than dogs. And our only focus since then has been on dogs.
Incubees: What are the challenges you see in the market at this point?
Nikhil Pratap Singh: In a contrast to the problems city dwellers have been flagging about the rising canine population, we think this would inspire more public space operators to open their doors to pets. What do you do if you have no one at home to nanny your pet but want to go out and meet someone? There is not a single place that would allow you to do that. Inclusive living is yet to arrive in Noida and we started this café to pioneer the idea. This is a space where pets will be able to socialize and their owners will also get to catch up with friends. We were looking for a place to make our dogs meet other dogs. Often our friends would also want to meet them, but we didn’t have a place to go. So we decided to build it ourselves.
Incubees: Tell us about your team and what inspires them.
Nikhil Pratap Singh: Team Bark is made of Fab 4: Somya, Nikhil, Aman and Rahul Narang. Our passion drives us and it becomes very clear when you walk into the cafe that we’ve put our heart and soul into the project.
Somya is an English Hons from Kirori Mal College, Delhi University. After passing out in 2016, she worked with Vistara Airlines for a couple of years before shifting to Indigo for a year. Nikhil, who graduated from Shahid Bhagat Singh College, Delhi University, got into the start-up space and worked with them for a few years, and decided to do something of his own. He took a Giani’s franchise at Crossings Republik, a residential community in Ghaziabad. After settling that business, he met with Somya and the rest is history.
Aman is an Amity University graduate and started working with Zomato at a time when Zomato had just entered the market. Passionate about owning his own outlet, he was running a successful Indian cloud kitchen called Dal Ni Chadni with Rahul Narang. Both of them met Nikhil and Somya and they realized the potential of this untapped market.
Incubees: Do you have plans to raise funding to grow your business or allow your business to organically grow?
Nikhil Pratap Singh: It’s a dilemma that is still not clear for us. We would try to grow it organically till the last mile. It’s not easy as having a unique new concept needs upscaling frequently to keep competition at bay hence the need for reinvesting arises. We need funding as the concept has huge potential but we are just waiting for the right one to join the team to step up our game.
Incubees: What are the challenges you face as a start-up?
Nikhil Pratap Singh: We have got immense love and support from pet lovers and we wouldn’t be anywhere without them. We have seen that people needed a place like Bark Street to treat their dogs.
In the last few days, since we opened, we have seen how much people love their pets and honestly, that’s all that is needed. The biggest challenge faced by a start-up or a new brand is to maintain the balance between cash flow and the need to make people aware of the brand which is the marketing side of it. It is very difficult to find that balance but somehow stumbling along the way we have managed to keep that balance.
To know more, visit their page: https://www.instagram.com/bark.street/
