How a Himalayan Product Became a Global Business
The story behind Dogsee Chew, and how Bhupendra Khanal turned a traditional Himalayan product into an international pet brand.
Some of the best business opportunities do not begin with a startup idea. They begin with something ordinary that has been sitting around for generations, waiting for someone to look at it differently. For Bhupendra Khanal, that opportunity was churpi, a traditional hard cheese from the Himalayan region. What began as an exploration into Himalayan food products eventually became Dogsee Chew, a pet food business that now exports to 30 countries and has grown into a business worth hundreds of crores.
But Khanal was not originally looking to build a pet food company. After building and exiting his software company, Simplify 360, he found himself thinking about what he should do next. Technology was the obvious path, but he wanted to explore something outside software. He began looking at the food industry and noticed a gap: the Himalayan region had an enormous variety of products, flavours and food traditions, yet very few had been turned into large consumer brands. His initial ambition was to build something like an “Haldiram of the Himalayas”, bringing products from Kashmir, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and other parts of the Himalayan belt to a much larger market.
The Product He Wasn't Looking For
Khanal began travelling through the region, studying its food and understanding the differences between the hills and the plains. He started seeing that Himalayan products could have relevance far beyond their traditional consumers. The flavours, for example, were not necessarily limited to Himalayan communities. The kind of spicy food people in the region enjoyed could also appeal to consumers in places such as Korea, Mexico, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. He was beginning to think less about selling Himalayan food to Himalayan people and more about finding global markets for products that had something inherently different about them.
The turning point came during a visit to a friend's dairy in Darjeeling. Khanal was told that dogs would often steal churpi when they got excited. To the dairy owner, this was simply a nuisance. Khanal saw it as a possible product insight. As a third-generation pet parent, he understood that dogs naturally being attracted to the product could indicate strong palatability. He bought 22 kilograms of churpi and took it back to Bangalore, where the idea began to develop into something more serious.
His wife, Sneha, who had a marketing background, immediately began looking at the product from a different perspective. Churpi was hard, natural, high in protein, had no preservatives and had the potential to support dental health because of the amount of chewing it required. These characteristics gave them the beginnings of a value proposition, but they still needed to answer the most important business question: **Was there a
