Cozo Pets: Sequoia and Matrix walked after diligence found staged dog-walkers

Cozo Pets (Brujun Technologies) was an Indian pet-wellness startup — dog walking, exercise, grooming — founded in 2018 by ex-Uber executives Vaibhav Jain and Yasir Khalil with Jain's wife Minal Kaushik.

That dog-walking and pet wellness could be a venture-scale business in India — a bet killed not by the market but by the founders' governance.

Angel Adit Parekh invested Rs 15 lakh after meeting Jain, roping in Viren Doshi (Rs 10 lakh), FirstCheque (~Rs 25 lakh) and Snapdeal founders' Titan Capital (Rs 2 crore). By mid-2019 the company claimed 3,500 pet parents served and revenue that had quadrupled from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 2 crore in three months; Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal was considering investing too.

In August 2019 Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners each issued $3.5 million term sheets — then their diligence in a Gurugram locality found about 20 dogs being walked by people in Cozo t-shirts, none of whom a long-serving guard had seen before; walkers and customers admitted being coached by the founders for the investors' visit. Moneycontrol verified bank statements showing Rs 56.64 lakh paid to Zorro, co-founder Khalil's call centre, across 10 transactions; Rs 27.6 lakh to CEO Jain's brother-in-law as rent advance and deposit; and Rs 6.93 lakh to Jain's sister-in-law for t-shirts and caps — while the company claimed all its revenue was cash, with no digital payments at all. Sequoia and Matrix recused. Investors sent a 13-page legal notice on September 25 demanding Rs 65,37,033 — investment plus 18% interest plus legal costs — alleging fraud, misappropriation and siphoning, and complained to the Registrar of Companies, the Income Tax Department and the Serious Frauds Investigation Office. Co-founder Khalil's reply accused the investors of sabotage to fund competing ventures; the company returned about 10% of the money raised.

Effectively defunct: the founders went unresponsive to investors for months, the pivoted Cozo Plus vet-consultation app failed at login when Moneycontrol tested it, and investors expected to recover little of the Rs 2.5 crore raised.

The fraud was caught by the least glamorous test in venture: a security guard asked whether the dog-walkers came every day.

The paper trail is the story — bank statements, rental agreements and legal notices turn what could be a he-said-she-said into documented related-party flows.

The investor side failed first at the angel stage, where no systems exist to verify customers; the term-sheet stage is where that gap gets priced.

A founder response accusing investors of sabotage, a non-compete demanded before refunds, and a broken app show a company optimising its story to the end.

Angels fund trust; diligence tests it. When claimed revenue is all cash and the customers can be staged on a street corner, the term sheet was the only real product.

As of the March 2, 2022 update, only about 10% of the invested money had been returned, founders had not responded to investors for roughly six months, and Titan Capital had separately invested in Super Tails, another pet-care platform. The material reports no recovery or resolution.