Vacay Sitters deploys digital marketplace to formalize South Africa's pet care sector

The platform utilizes a smart job pool system and verified profiles to transition animal sitting and walking services from informal networks to a structured digital environment.

South African startup Vacay Sitters operates a digital marketplace designed to connect pet owners with vetted sitters and walkers. Founded in 2024 by Bianca van Zyl and Dhiraj Sharma, the platform transitions the procurement of pet care from informal channels, such as social media and word-of-mouth, into a structured digital framework. The system provides detailed user profiles, verification processes, rating mechanisms, and a secure in-app booking infrastructure to manage overnight sitting and on-demand walking services.

The technology was developed after the founders identified market fragmentation and reliability challenges, specifically regarding last-minute service cancellations. To mitigate this operational issue, the platform incorporates a smart job pool system engineered to automatically surface alternative available personnel when a scheduled sitter becomes unavailable.

“Our focus has been on building trust, safety, and strong local supply density in a pet care market that has historically been highly fragmented and informal across much of South Africa. To address last-minute cancellations, a common pain point in the industry, we developed a smart job pool system that quickly surfaces alternative available sitters when needed,” Sharma told Disrupt Africa.

Operating under a bootstrapped model, the platform has registered over 70 vetted sitters and processed more than 500 completed overnight bookings. The infrastructure currently covers approximately 40 suburbs within the Western Cape region. To accommodate different user requirements, the company recently integrated an on-demand dog walking feature and is developing an hourly care module to expand its service offerings.

Sharma detailed the platform's utilization trends: “Demand tends to increase around long weekends, school holidays, and annual travel periods. We have seen especially strong uptake in overnight care, alongside growing interest in on-demand dog walking. We are also seeing increasing requests for short check-in visits, particularly from cat owners and residents in secure complexes. Our upcoming Hourly Care feature is designed to address this growing demand.”

The company generates revenue through a commission model based on platform-facilitated bookings. The current operational strategy prioritizes expanding supply density, acquiring users, and establishing system reliability across its existing markets before scaling the software infrastructure to other major South African metropolitan areas.

“As a bootstrapped, early-stage marketplace, our current priority is expanding supply density, customer acquisition, and platform trust rather than short-term profitability. Revenue continues to grow in line with booking volume as the marketplace scales,” Sharma stated. Over the long term, the founders project potential to deploy the marketplace model in other African urban centers characterized by similar service fragmentation.