Her life revolves around foods and toys…for pets! | Kshama Wagh

Kshama Wagh, owner of Maya Pet Food and Accessories Pvt. Ltd. that, goes by the brand Petsgallery

Things don’t bother her even if the world goes to the dogs or if it rains cats and dogs. What bothers her is how the world treats its pets!

It has to. After all, she’s Pune’s foremost and most original pet food and accessories shop owner. Today, a chain of four stores in all corners of Pune (main store on Nal Stop on Karve Road, others in Karve Nagar, Aundh, and Bibewadi) and another in the planning, this is one tail that won’t stop growing soon.

On a serious note, they are as resilient as a dog’s tail that didn’t stop wagging for their four-legged customers even during the worst phase of the lockdown. The lady and her daughter went around the city, risking their lives while supplying their orders.

For a schoolteacher with a B Com and Masters in Child Psychology, Kshama remains unapologetically (pun intended!) restless, like a cat on a hot tin roof. If it’s gotten under her skin, she has to get going, which she did in 2004. Frequent visits to Crawford Market for things as basic as leashes got her thinking, only to be fuelled further by a friend and later business partner who imported oils for horses. Add to this her appeal for the well-heeled who would walk into pet food and accessories stores.

Maya Pet Food and Accessories P Ltd., like its owner, was always unique. It was one of Pune’s first parlour & Spa for pets. With space being a constraint, they moved on to other things in the same line and are today Pune’s foremost in pet food, accessories, hostel facility, and an in-house Vet. These days, their USP, a hostel in Karve Nagar for up to 20 dogs (cats, go eat your hearts out!), is seeing developments and will soon have a swimming pool.

Quiz Ksama on what she likes most about her work and with a smile that can get a thousand tails wagging, says it’s helping people who come to her shop (they also have a dedicated ecommerce presence!) buy just the right merchandise for their darling pets. Pets, she says, are a full-time commitment, almost like a child, and people need to be informed about what they ought to buy. To that extent, they are fully equipped with their own drug license to dispense medicines. Known as she is in the pet food and accessories industry, companies use her services to hold seminars to educate the public about newer products and the right way to service a pet.

If you thought Petsgallery was only about pet foods, leashes, medicine and things essential, think again! Her stores, in fact, indulge pets with their entire range of perfumes, cosmetics, body sprays, deodorants, body lotions, paw-butter creams (for the oh-so-cute paws of cats, dogs, kittens and pups!), rain-coats, and even tees! With a range that could put most grooming shops for humans to shame, she rightfully has clients buying things for their four-legged siblings!

With the conversation turning to her plans, you get to see the exuberant side of an otherwise hard-nosed businesswoman! She’s promoting a new dog-food brand made locally in Pune (as opposed to 80% imports otherwise). For its pan-India presence, she travels extensively to set the marketing, sales, and distribution chains in order and is in it to make the most of her two-decade-long experience in handling and growing brands! In her creative space, she is happy with this diversion. It doesn’t end here. She is also into importing toys for pets and plans to upp the same in time.

Four stores, twelve staff members, four managers, and a world full of satisfied customers on two and four feet! She says it all comes down to how she’s been training her staff. Wary of untrained folks dispensing the wrong stuff leading to injuries and ill-health, she remains fastidious about training them on everything from animal breeds to medications, kinds of foods, portion sizes, adult vs baby, and the whole works followed by three months delivering orders to customers. Next comes display and merchandise that she insists can make or break a brand. So good has she been at it that one of her senior staff, a painter till a while back, is today an authority in one of her stores! Besides, she is particular about trying new products at her end before accepting them.

That being the level of her commitment, the one impediment that irks her most is people getting into the trade who are driven ONLY by its profit margins. Knowing nothing about either end of a pet, they hold forth and spoil the market for players like Maya Pet Food.

Taking as she does the ups and downs, woofs and meows in her stride, she has a few words, her success mantras for newbies; “You ought to service well, deliver promptly, educate the world, deal with end-customers, guide them on quality and variety. And only then can you hope for success.”

Contact : 98225 45583
Website : https://petsgallery.co/