Phone-video breath counts for dogs with heart disease, sent to their own vet
TL;DR Restrate is an app that vet clinics prescribe to owners of dogs already diagnosed with heart disease. You film your dog asleep for a minute, the app counts breaths, and a sustained rise goes to the treating vet. Clinics pay a monthly fee and owners pay a small subscription.
India's pet care spending reached about US$2,349M in 2025 (about ₹22,700 Cr)[1], and more of those pets are older dogs living with chronic disease. Dogs with heart disease breathe faster at rest. In a 703-dog home study their median was 18.0 breaths a minute, against 16.1 for healthy adults[3].
Owners rarely count, and visits are weeks apart. Vets mostly confirm heart-related fluid on the lungs with X-rays once signs appear, and 98% of vets in one survey did so[2]. By then the dog is often already struggling.
There's no simple, routine way for an Indian owner to send the vet a reliable number between visits.
What it does, in regulatory terms: home monitoring and alerting for a dog already under a vet's care. Restrate does not diagnose disease or recommend treatment. Every alert goes to the treating veterinarian, who decides what to do.
The vet enrols the dog and sets an alert level. Each evening you prop the phone up beside your sleeping dog for 60 seconds. The app counts breaths from the video, logs the number and charts the trend. If counts stay above the vet's level for two nights then the clinic gets an alert and you're told to call.
The seed proposed biosensor collars and telemedicine for all pets, and I've narrowed it. Collars that read vital signs exist, but the main published study of one was co-authored by the maker's staff and covered healthy dogs[3]. A 2025 study found that phone video counted sleeping breaths within about one breath a minute of manual counts[4]. And a phone costs the owner nothing extra.
The user is the owner of a dog with diagnosed heart disease, often a small or older breed. Clinics pay because the alerts bring dogs back for timely review. My estimate is ₹1,500–3,000 a month per clinic, plus ₹199–399 a month from owners. Telehealth pet services already exist, and one large pet platform promises a vet call within 10 minutes[5], but none of them tracks a number between visits.
The phone-video evidence is new, since the Scientific Reports study came out in 2025[4]. A 703-dog collar study in the same year gave the first large set of normal home breathing rates by age and size[3]. Indian pet spending is forecast to grow about 8% a year to 2033[1].
There is no public count of Indian dogs under treatment for heart disease. The firm figure is the wider pet care market - US$2,349M in 2025, forecast at US$4,316M by 2033[1]. Treat that as adjacent context. The real test is how many dogs on heart medicine an average city clinic sees each month.
One European firm sells a GPS collar with cardiac monitoring for dogs at risk of heart disease, on subscription in over 35 countries[6]. A US firm sells a collar that tracks pulse, breathing and temperature, with a vet in its app[7]. Both need hardware. In India, pet platforms offer vet calls but no prescribed home tracking. The gap is a zero-hardware tool that sits inside the treating clinic's workflow.
| Difficulty | Moderate (38/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹30–60 L |
| Time to launch | 5–8 months |
The counting model is the technical core, and the published method was tested on only 27 healthy dogs[4]. You'll need to validate it on dogs with heart disease, in Indian homes with ceiling fans, poor light and fur of every length. The commercial work is getting busy clinics to enrol dogs and actually act on alerts.
No licence for the app itself, but veterinary advice stays with registered vets. Restrate only passes numbers on to them.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI decide what an alert means or what to do about it. The treating vet makes every call, and the count needs checking against manual counts before launch.
Want to work out the AI layer for Restrate? Talk to Yash →
I like this as a tidy, low-capital idea for a founder with computer-vision skills and a vet co-founder or adviser. It's weak if you want a broad pet super-app. Before you raise, prove the count matches a vet's manual count within two breaths a minute on 50 dogs with heart disease.
Plan for roughly ₹30–60 L, mostly for the app, validation work with vets and clinic sales.
The app itself needs no licence that we found, but advice must come from registered vets. Check veterinary teleconsultation rules and follow the DPDP Act for owner videos.
Yes, heart disease in dogs is common everywhere. Check your country's veterinary rules on remote monitoring before you sign clinics.
The free Restrate validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the veterinary and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for vets and owners, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Restrate or something close to it? The make-or-break work is proving the count holds up in real homes and getting clinics to act on alerts, and I'm happy to help you test both. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.