Intango Ventures Invests in Basepaws to Strengthen D2C Pet Genetics with Online Know-How

We are happy to announce that Intango Ventures has invested in Basepaws, a Los Angeles-based pet genetics company that developed the world’s first at-home cat DNA test.

Have you heard of  23AndMe? Think of Basepaws as 23AndMeow.

Anna Skaya, a four-time founder with two past exits founded Basepaws in 2017 with a passion to build a personalized health company whose mission is to improve and extend the lives of pets. She teamed up with two post-docs from Oxford and a strong team to build a new pet health brand focused on genetics and personalized nutrition.

Back in April 2019, Anna presented Basepaws on Shark Tank, and landed $250K in Sharks’ investment money.

What is Basepaws?

Basepaws is a pet genetics company, using genetics data in a variety of fields including pet nutrition, pet medicine, and as genetic models for human disease. Basepaws has developed the first consumer genetic test for cats and created proprietary cost-saving sequencing technology which will help build a large biobank of pet genetic data. Their mission is to use an animal DNA biobank to create better animal models for preclinical testing in disease and drug development for pets and humans.

Their first consumer product is the CatKit, the world’s first DNA test for cats, and they are actively working on R&D for other products and pets.

Why did we invest in Basepaws?

We believe in D2C (Direct to Consumer) and in eCommerce, and we think that we can bring value in addition to just monetary support. Our expertise in online advertising and marketing, in combination with global business perspective provides a unique value-add that is crucial to the success of a D2C company.

Basepaws is first and foremost a data company with a Direct to Consumer model. Combining it with Intango’s online expertise is, in our view, a winning formula for success.

With this investment we are happy to join the Sharks as well as Plug and Play and other great investors who have teamed up to support Basepaws’ growth.

Basepaws joins the Intango Ventures portfolio and the Intango family. Intango Ventures provides not only capital but also access to Intango’s global customers, partners, and network of the media industry connections. It offers technical and business advice from industry veterans and experienced entrepreneurs as well as access to the collective experience and business connections of our portfolio companies. Our goal is to partner with companies that can benefit from our media expertise and global perspective.