When Ruweida Salifu ’14 imported a small box of pet supplies for a business experiment, she wasn’t thinking about building what she hopes will become Ghana’s go-to pet-care company. She simply wanted to test an idea.
After getting her first dog, a poodle she named Kodi, Salifu found herself frustrated by the limited range of quality pet products available in Ghana. Rather than settling for the limited options, she decided to test whether other pet owners shared the same frustrations. She imported a small box of pet supplies, dog shirts, shampoos, brushes, and sprays and listed them on a newly created Instagram page to gauge demand.
“I didn’t start with huge capital,” she recalls. “It was just a small box. If it didn’t work, I’d use the supplies for Kodi. The first day I posted a product, I started selling.”
That early demand revealed that Ghana’s pet-care market was larger and more active than many people assumed, a fact Salifu had not fully appreciated. More importantly, it showed that pet owners were increasingly viewing their animals as more than household pets.
“People are seeing pets as very close companions. Some even refer to them as their kids,” she says.
What began as a small retail operation in 2021 soon became a lesson in customer discovery. As more customers purchased products from Kodi Pets, many also began asking for grooming services. At the same time, Salifu was experiencing a challenge familiar to many pet owners: grooming providers were often fully booked, making it difficult to secure appointments for her own pets, which had grown to three dogs and a cat.
