A London-based veterinary start-up aiming to bring greater price transparency to pet care has raised £15 million to accelerate its expansion across the UK.
Hello Vet, which allows owners to stay with their pets as they go under and wake up from anaesthesia, plans to open at least 20 to 25 new clinics and hire around 200 vets and veterinary nurses over the next two years. The business says its growth will be paced carefully to ensure standards of care are maintained.
James Lighton, co-founder and chief executive of Hello Vet, said the funding gives the company confidence to scale, but not at the expense of quality. “We have the funding to open at least 20 or 25 more clinics,” he said. “The pace is really about how quickly we can be confident that quality of care isn’t declining as we grow. We’d rather do it well over four years than badly in a year and a half.”
The latest funding round was led by US venture capital firm Addition and UK-based investor Future Positive, alongside 15 veterinary professionals who previously backed the business with £6 million in 2023. Hello Vet currently has around 7,500 registered patients.
The expansion comes amid growing scrutiny of pricing in the veterinary sector. The Competition & Markets Authority reported in October that average vet prices rose by 63 per cent between 2016 and 2023, far outpacing inflation. It also found that pet owners pay an average of 16.6 per cent more at large veterinary groups than at independent practices. Six major chains now control about 60 per cent of UK clinics, compared with just 11 per cent a decade earlier.
In response, the CMA has proposed requiring veterinary businesses to publish price lists on a comparison site, a move that could come into force from the end of 2026. Hello Vet already publishes estimated procedure costs online, although the company positions its prices as “middle of the pack” rather than the cheapest.
Alongside its clinic model, Hello Vet offers a free WhatsApp triage service designed to help owners avoid unnecessary appointments. The service, which aims to respond within 15 minutes, is handled by teams at local clinics and has helped owners save more than £75,000 over the past year, according to the company.
Dr Oli Viner, co-founder and chief veterinary technology officer, said the service can make a meaningful difference. “Not long after we opened, someone messaged in worried about their kitten’s breathing,” he said. “They sent us a video and we could see the kitten was actually purring. In a traditional clinic, they’d have had to rush in, which would have been stressful and unnecessary.”
Hello Vet was founded in 2022 by Viner, Lighton and Alessandro Guazzi, opening its first clinic in July last year. It has since launched four additional sites in London and Hertfordshire, with a fifth due to open in January. The company plans to grow using a hub-and-spoke model, combining larger central clinics with smaller satellite locations in surrounding areas as it expands nationwide.
