British-Pakistani entrepreneur Amman Ahmed built a pet music business, Music For Pets, into a global brand and sold it to the US music company Create Music Group in June 2023 for a reported eight-figure sum, which he describes as an all-cash deal. The business, known in the media as Petflix, was started in 2017 by Ahmed and his co-founder Ricardo Henriquez with about £1,000 of Ahmed’s own money, after investors had turned him down, and he stayed on after the sale as its President. His story is now being retold as an example of a bootstrapped British-Pakistani founder who reached a high-value international exit.
The idea came from Henriquez, who composed calming music for his anxious dog in El Salvador and saw that it worked. The two turned this into a library of relaxing music and video content for dogs and cats, and they published it mainly through two YouTube channels, RelaxMyDog and RelaxMyCat, and on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Fire TV and Roku. The channels now have a combined 4.8 million subscribers and over one billion streams, and the company says it has reached more than 50 million pets, with audiences streaming more than 12 million hours of content each month. Revenue comes from advertising, streaming royalties and subscriptions.
Ahmed had been through a failed attempt before. His earlier venture, Rormix, was a music video app that reached 150,000 monthly users and raised £250,000, but he wound it down after deciding that fundraising was pulling him away from the product. Music For Pets was therefore built entirely without outside investment, and he has said that the company used only about £5,000 in total on marketing. Born and raised in Armley, Leeds, he later based himself in Manchester.
Since the sale, Ahmed has kept working on music for animals. He produced Dreaming Dog, a 13-track reggae album designed to calm dogs, with the Grammy-winning producer ANTAEUS, and he has become a voting member of the Recording Academy. Create Music Group has said it plans to invest a further 10 million dollars over 36 months to expand the brand. The details of the purchase price were never made public, and the eight-figure figure is based on statements by the founder and media reports.
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