Laika - Sustainable Pet Care

Laika - Sustainable Pet Care

Laika - Sustainable Pet Care

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fitNSUtwu4M

Laika is a sustainable pet brand that empowers our pets to be more than just our family members, a superhero who can help us hooman save the planet. We believe that dogs can enjoy healthy and tasty treats while saving our planet at the same time!

Laika makes sure that all of our products must be great for the dog's health as well as for the environment. Our first product is Laika Treats, an insect-protein dog treats made from natural ingredients. We choose insects as a primary source of protein for their high nutritional benefits while using minimal natural resources. At the same time, our insects help us to upcycle food surpluses: eating only clean vegetables that hooman won’t consume and turn them into high-quality protein and minerals.

Laika is tackling two major problems:

1. Dog food quality and their transparency - we will make sure that the food we offer to our dogs must be healthy, starting from the source of our ingredients, formulation by pet nutritionists, and processing and their impacts to the environment (such as land usage, water consumption, carbon emission.)

2. Food surplus and food waste - with the help of our insects, we use the concept of circular economy to upcycle food surpluses and turn them into high-quality protein sources while requiring minimal natural resources. (To learn more about our circular economy, please watch our introduction video.)

Laika is designed for pet parents who look for healthy choices for their dogs and would like to save our planet at the same time!

Laika was started when our founders was triggered by the FAO reports about food crisis and food waste issue. We were shocked by the amount of food waste that human produced per year, especially in our country (Thailand), while another large group of the population still does not have accessed to healthy diet. We start to look into alternative protein source that is sustainable for our planet and future generations, which led us to insect protein. We turn ourselves into hand-on insect farmers to learn about them and got fascinated by their ability to convert food surplus into clean protein. Working closely with research universities, we realize that the nutritional profile from our insect protein is suitable not just for human consumption but also our best friends, our dogs. More importantly, the only by-product from our insect farm is natural compost (the insect poo) which is tested to be a great fertilizer to grow more green-leaf vegetables.

As the dog and cat parents ourselves, we noticed the limited options of healthy pet treats in the market. And more importantly, none of the existing products in the pet industry talked about sustainability, unlike other sectors at the time. This is how we decided to work with pet food nutritionists to develop a healthy dog treat recipe with insects as the primary source of protein as our first minimum viable product for market testing.

Over the past two years, we have been exploring, testing, and developing Laika products and our insect farms and have upcycled more than 30 tons of food surpluses: saving them from going into landfills and emit greenhouse gases. Currently, we are expanding our farming facility and aim to be able to upcycle more than 100 tons of food surplus by 2022.

As an early-stage startup, we would like to be a carbon-neutral company from the start and inspire people that business can be financially feasible and environmentally sustainable at the same time. And if our insects and our dogs can help to save our planet, what else can we humans do to preserve our nature for future generations?

www.laikapetfood.com