Pet Shipping Becomes a Dark Horse Track: Why Enterprise Numbers Surged 25x?

As capital market hot money flows into the pet shipping and travel sector, a new transformation is rapidly unfolding. Recently, Eagle Fund, which focuses on new consumption and innovation tracks, announced a strategic investment in high-end pet service brand Linghang Pet Love, with a post-investment valuation reaching 500 million RMB. Incubated by Linghang Lexing, Linghang Pet Love leverages its parent company’s 8-year mature air logistics experience. Initially launching a full-chain "door-to-door pet service" to address industry pain points of fragmented services and lack of safety guarantees, it has now upgraded to an integrated ecological model driven by "travel services + space operations", catering to pet families’ high-quality travel needs of "humans and pets traveling together".

In terms of business, Linghang Pet Love has directly signed contracts with 7 major airlines, covering 17 airports and a ground network in 42 cities. It also connects with upgraded services such as "pets in cabin" offered by airlines like China Eastern Airlines, implementing hub route guarantees at airports including Beijing Capital Airport. With a market share exceeding 80% in Shenzhen and a net profit margin of 58% per airport model, its profitability and market recognition have been fully verified. According to plans, Linghang Pet Love will cover 20 airports nationwide, serve 300,000 pets by 2026, and aim to increase its market share to 25%. In the future, it will strive for industry rule-making power by outputting intelligent hardware standards and insurance risk control models, fulfilling its vision of "global pet travel ecosystem builder".

Nearly simultaneously, another company announced the completion of a ten-million-level angel round of financing. Led by global renowned maritime logistics enterprise Yunquna, the funds will be mainly used for information-based online ticket booking services in pet travel, linking compatible services between domestic pet-friendly airlines and airports, to realize one-stop convenient purchase of "owner + pet" tickets. It aims to establish an "from 0 to 1" online + offline travel service standard for domestic pet-friendly travel, making pet travel simpler, safer and more comfortable. The cross-border entry of traditional logistics giants represented by Yunquna also reveals that the pet travel market is being re-evaluated from the perspective of a broader modern logistics system.

The ensuing question is: why has the capital market begun to focus on the pet shipping and travel sector? According to Hanseektech, the sustained and rapid growth of market scale is one of the underlying logics attracting capital attention. Surveys show that the number of enterprises in the pet shipping field has increased nearly 25 times in the past 6 years, making it one of the fastest-growing "high-spending" new tracks. This growth rate, which is about 10 times higher than the total number of pet industry enterprises in the same period, is also strong evidence of the rapid expansion of market scale. At the same time, its steep growth curve points directly to an erupting demand volcano.

However, the barbaric growth of enterprise numbers has not automatically spawned a mature market. Instead, it is like a mirror, reflecting the industry’s deepest contradictions: on one side, the deterministic growth driven by the emotional rigid demand of "humans and pets traveling together" after pets are "family-oriented"; on the other side, the supply status quo of extremely non-standard service processes, difficulty in establishing safety trust, and chaotic prices and quality.

Therefore, the capital market’s investment choices this year have actually pointed out the direction for the second half of the pet travel and shipping industry: shifting from a reckless "quantity competition" to a battle for "quality definition rights". Who can establish credible standards for this highly fragmented market? Who can transform an anxiety-ridden transportation into a safe, transparent and even comfortable experience? Who can integrate complex resources from aviation, high-speed rail, intra-city logistics to insurance and medical care to build one-stop solutions? These may be the key factors determining future market competition and driving sustainable and high-quality industry development.

In fact, in response to the surging demand, the supply side has undergone iconic evolution in the past year: from the previous scattered, small-scale and non-standard "small workshop" model to a new stage where mainstream transportation systems and Internet platforms (the "regular army") have entered. This has greatly improved service reliability and accessibility. For example, in public transportation, aviation and railway transportation have continuously increased planning in the pet travel field in recent years.

In April 2025, some Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail trains took the lead in piloting pet shipping services featuring "isolated transportation, separate humans and pets, and dedicated care", with the 12306 App launching the "pet shipping" function simultaneously. Within a few months, the pilot scope was rapidly expanded to 25 stations on 8 high-speed rail lines including Beijing-Shanghai, Beijing-Guangzhou and Beijing-Harbin, demonstrating strong market demand and the railway department’s determination to promote.

In air transportation, "pets in cabin" has shifted from pilot to "new normal". Since 2025, at least 8 airlines including China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, Shenzhen Airlines and Hainan Airlines have intensively upgraded this service. Taking China Southern Airlines as an example, its "Pets in Cabin" service has covered more than 200 direct routes. Service design has also become increasingly humanized: passengers carrying pets are usually arranged in window seats in the last row of the cabin, with pet carriers placed under the seats in the front row.

In urban short-distance and intra-city travel, online car-hailing platforms such as Didi and Hello have become key variables. For Didi, since the pilot operation of pet travel services in March 2022 to the official national launch in November 2024, the pet service sector has been highly expected. In the year since the official launch, pet travel orders have given Didi a prominent feedback. Up to now, nearly 4 million pets have registered pet files, with cats accounting for about 25% and dogs about 71% of pet travel orders.

At the same time, some professional pet shipping companies have begun to explore standardized and technological paths to establish industry benchmarks, aiming to create more comprehensive integrated pet travel solutions based on actual consumer pain points. However, as mentioned earlier, despite broad prospects and continuous entry of giants, the pet travel and shipping industry is far from mature. Behind its explosive growth, there is still a sharp contradiction between the strong "emotional rigid demand" and the extremely "non-standard" service supply, which also constitutes the industry’s current biggest challenge and trust crisis.

The primary contradiction is safety and risk. Pets are living beings, facing risks such as heatstroke, stress reactions, escape and even death during transportation. In the past few years, negative incidents such as pet deaths during air, railway and vehicle shipping have occurred frequently, each time deeply hurting pet owners’ hearts and severely damaging industry trust. Although new regulations from airlines, high-speed rail and policies have improved hardware conditions, the full-process service standards involving temperature control, emergency handling and personnel professionalism are still vague and inconsistent.

Secondly, the opacity of prices and services is also a severe challenge. Due to the lack of unified pricing standards and service lists, the market has chaotic prices and frequent "hidden consumption". The cost of a single shipment ranges from several hundred to several thousand yuan, but what services are included in the fee and how responsibilities are defined in case of problems often rely on merchants’ verbal commitments, making it difficult for consumers to protect their rights.

How to resolve these contradictions? According to pet industry observers, to break the non-standard dilemma and convert the exploding demand into a sustainable industry, the pet shipping industry must move towards in-depth integration of "standardization, branding and platformization". Future market opportunities may lie in this "three-ization" process.

• Standardization is the cornerstone: The industry urgently needs to establish a complete set of standards from service processes, personnel training, equipment configuration to pricing systems and insurance claims. At the same time, industry associations should join hands with leading enterprises to promote the establishment of a certification system similar to "Five-Star Pet Shipping Service Certification" and promote it as a universal industry norm, so that high-quality services can be identified and chosen.
• Branding is the way out: Among 260,000 enterprises, there are few brands that can provide stable, reliable and warm services nationwide. "The pet travel market is mixed with many speculators who only want to make one-time deals, which is an important reason for the surge in enterprise numbers but low branding degree," the founder of a pet travel platform told Pet Industry Observation. "Previously, pet shipping was between live animal transportation and consumer services, facing overlapping and blank supervision. The low industry entry threshold has led to uneven service quality, damaging the industry’s credibility." In his view, in the future, only brands with self-operated transportation capacity, standardized service systems, strong technological guarantees and good after-sales reputation can stand out. These enterprises will not only provide simple physical "transportation" but also "assurable entrustment" solutions, thereby gaining brand premium and customer loyalty.
• Platformization is the ecology: "The significance of the platform lies in aggregating demand, formulating rules, evaluating and supervising, forcing service providers on the platform to improve standards, and ultimately realizing the survival of the fittest and reshaping the industry ecology. Therefore, the platform-based ecology may be the core driving force for the development of the pet travel and shipping market," a pet track investment manager told Pet Industry Observation. "Just like Ctrip and Qunar in the tourism market, there may be a one-stop pet travel platform integrating full-chain services such as aviation, high-speed rail, professional shipping companies, intra-city express, insurance and quarantine agency in the future. Users can compare prices, book, buy insurance, check real-time status and conduct after-sales evaluations on one platform."

Overall, from airline cabins to high-speed rail dedicated carriages, from Didi’s pet-dedicated cars to the platform ecology of professional pet travel enterprises, infrastructure to ensure the travel dignity and safety of "fur babies" is being built. However, it is easy to build hardware, but difficult to establish soft trust. The future of the pet shipping and travel industry may not lie in the continued expansion of enterprise numbers, but in whether it can forge industry standards and benchmark brands worthy of entrusting life and emotions from this carnival of barbaric growth.