Apply for Pet Care Innovation Prize 2025

The PCI Prize offers you transformative business lessons, valuable connections with Purina leadership, and the opportunity to win cash prizes.

Prize Information

• Cash
  • Up to five startups will be selected as Winners, each receiving a $25,000 (US Dollars) prize. One entry will receive an additional $25,000 (US Dollars) as the Grand Prize winner.
• Business Acceleration “Boot Camp”
  • In addition to the above cash prizes, Winners will win an all-expenses-paid four-day Boot Camp for one Founder (additional Founders can attend if you cover their travel expenses) to help them refine and deliver their company’s pitch and prepare for Global Pet Expo, where they’ll exhibit and have a final pitch in front of pet industry leaders and influencers to determine the Grand Prize Winner.
  • Held in St. Louis, the global headquarters for Nestlé Purina, the Boot Camp sessions will include evaluation, education and mentoring from a mix of Purina and independent experts in relevant areas, and pitch coaching by world class accelerator mentors from outside industry, 9Square Ventures, Purina R&D leadership, and Active Capital. Specific areas to be addressed might include growth planning, R&D milestones, funding strategies, product-market fit, channel development, scaling operations and more.
• Global Pet Expo
  • The Grand Prize Winner and Winners will be prominently featured in a PCIP booth at Global Pet Expo, presented by the American Pet Products Association (APPA) and the Pet Industry Distributors Association (PIDA) in Orlando, Florida, courtesy of the APPA. The Grand Prize Winner and Winners will also receive travel and other assistance to prepare for and make the most of this high profile event.
• Publicity
  • Through press announcements during the PCIP and activities at Global Pet Expo, the Grand Prize Winner and other Winners also get the publicity and awareness early stage companies need to succeed.
• Community
  • The 2023 PCIP Winners will join a community of PCIP alumni, whose companies continue to grow and succeed in the pet industry. Past winners have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment, developed industry partnerships, and have offered each other the kind of peer support every entrepreneur wishes they had.
  • Note: Pet Care Innovation Prizes include responsibilities on your part. These include participation in activities by a founder able to make decisions on the company’s behalf, ability to travel to St. Louis, Missouri (for the Boot Camp) and Orlando, Florida (for Global Pet Expo), providing documentation to verify claims made in your application, and participation in publicity activities.

What kinds of innovative products are eligible?

• They’re looking for some things, and there are some things they are not:
  • Things they’re looking for: cat and dog food and treats, litter, specialty nutrition, diagnostics, and innovative pet care business opportunities beyond food and snacks to improve the health, welfare, and care of both dogs and cats. Important to them are scalability, quality, sustainability, or the application of technology and new business models to improve the lives of pets.
  • Products and services they’re not seeking for the Pet Care Innovation Prize: pet pharmaceuticals, premiums and gifts, kennel services, grooming services, and pet insurance services.

Eligibility Criteria

• The competition is open to any business entity selling products or services and they are legally able to travel and work in the US – EXCEPT employees and contractors of Nestlé Purina and/or Active Capital, and current NPPC Suppliers who are all ineligible.

Judging Criteria

• The criteria are intended to assess whether your pet care innovation is a product/business that they can help you get to scale – and fits the strategy. They’ll be judging based on:
• Unique, novel or differentiated product or service that solves a meaningful pet care need that improves the lives of pets.
• Traction, such as Revenue, i.e. showing $100,000 or more in annual revenue from the product or service you’re pitching. You may annualize your last quarter’s sales.
• That your product or service is sold to consumers or through a channel to consumers (no B2B pitches, please)
• That you own or have transferable rights for the Intellectual Property (IP) you’re pitching
• Have an established business entity and can do business in the United States (including traveling to the US)
• Be willing to have us ask reasonable questions as part of due diligence to assess the strength and scalability of their business/product.

For more information, visit PCIP.