India Has Over 60 Million Street Dogs. I Couldn’t Ignore That…
There’s a particular kind of dog you stop noticing after a while.
The thin one near the tea stall. The puppy curled under a parked scooter. The mother with her ribs showing, nosing through a wet pile of garbage while her litter waits a few feet away. You see them on your way to work, on your way back, every single day and somewhere along the line, your brain just files them under normal and moves on.
That’s the part that got me. The slow realisation that I had trained myself to look away.
How did this become normal? And why does “I’ll do something about it later” feel so easy to say?
This article is the long answer to that question. It’s also the reason Dupih exists.
First, the number that stopped me
I used to assume the stray dog issue was a small, local thing a few dogs in every neighbourhood, nothing more. The actual numbers are not small at all.
India’s most recent official nationwide count, the 20th Livestock Census (2019), recorded roughly 1.53 crore (15.3 million) stray dogs. And many experts believe even that is an undercount, because urban coverage and counting methods are inconsistent.
Then there’s the bigger estimate. Mars Petcare’s State of Pet Homelessness Index puts India’s free-roaming dog population at around 62 million — and found that 77% of Indians see a stray or street dog at least once a week.
The exact figure shifts depending on who’s counting and how. But whether it’s 15 million or 62 million, the conclusion is the same:
This is not a stray dog “problem.” This is a stray dog reality, at a scale most of us have never let ourselves think about.
What that reality actually looks like
A street dog in India isn’t living a wild, free life. It’s surviving an unprotected one.
They survive heat and monsoon. They survive hunger. They survive untreated wounds, mange, infections, road accidents, and — far too often — deliberate cruelty. Most of them never get veterinary care in time, because there is no one whose job it is to give it.
And then there’s the part that makes this everyone’s problem, not just an animal-lover’s concern: rabies.
According to the World Health Organization, dogs are responsible for up to 99% of human rabies transmissions, and India accounts for around 36% of the world’s rabies deaths — an estimated 18,000 to 20,000 deaths every year. A large share of those victims are children under 15.
Here’s the cruel irony in that statistic:
Rabies in humans is 100% preventable through prompt treatment, and vaccinating dogs is the single most cost-effective way to stop it.
So the suffering runs both ways. Dogs die on the street, and people die from a disease we already know how to prevent. That’s not a problem you solve by hating the animals. It’s one you solve with vaccination, sterilisation, and basic care done at scale.
The question I couldn’t shake
I kept circling back to one uncomfortable thought.
Why does helping street animals always feel like something we do “later”?
Later, when the business makes money. Later, when there’s more free time. Later, when somebody better resourced steps up.
But the dogs don’t operate on “later.” Their later is a litter that doesn’t survive the season.
So I asked myself a different question — a business question this time: Can a brand do something from day one, instead of waiting to be successful first?
That question became Dupih.
What Dupih is — and what it isn’t
Let me be honest about what Dupih is on the surface. It’s a pet store. We sell toys, collars, harnesses, feeding essentials — the everyday things people buy for the pets they love at home.
I’m not going to pretend it’s something grander than that.
But underneath the products, there’s the actual reason I started it:
Every order should create joy twice. Once for the pet who receives it. Once for an animal still waiting for help on the street.
That’s not a tagline I came up with for marketing. It’s the brief I gave myself before the first product was ever listed.
The pledge
Here is the concrete part, because a mission without a mechanism is just a feeling.
From our very first order, a portion of what Dupih earns is pledged to stray dog welfare — feeding, sterilisation, vaccination, and rescue efforts run by NGOs working on the ground.
Not after 10,000 orders. Not after we turn profitable. Not after some far-off milestone where it finally feels “safe” to give.
From order #1.
Because missions that are delayed have a way of becoming missions that are forgotten. I didn’t want to build that kind of brand.
I want to be clear-eyed about this, too. Dupih alone will not fix a 60-million-dog reality. No single small brand can. But a small brand can absolutely refuse to be indifferent and that choice changes what the business is actually for.
I’m looking for people to build this with
This is the part I most want you to read.
A pledge is only as strong as where the money actually goes. So I’m actively looking to collaborate with the people already doing the hard, unglamorous work:
- Stray dog and animal welfare NGOs — for feeding drives, sterilisation (ABC) and vaccination camps, and rescue + rehab.
- Independent rescuers and local feeders — the people who already know every dog on their street by name.
- Vets and clinics — who can stretch a donation further than I ever could on my own.
- Other creators and pet parents — anyone who wants to turn a following into something that feeds and treats real animals.
India already has the framework for this to work. The central government’s Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2023 make local bodies responsible for managing the street dog population humanely, through sterilisation and vaccination rather than cruelty. The policy direction exists. What’s missing is consistent execution, funding, and people willing to keep showing up.
If you run a shelter, foster, feed, or volunteer — or if you’ve ever wanted to and didn’t know where to start — I genuinely want to hear from you. Reach out through dupih.com. Let’s figure out how a pet order can quietly turn into a meal, a vaccine, or a sterilisation.
What I want Dupih to stand for
Strip everything else away and it comes down to a few simple things I actually believe:
That pets deserve better products. That street animals deserve better lives. That buying something can be thoughtful instead of thoughtless. And that commerce, done right, can carry a little compassion inside it.
Products can be copied. Anyone can sell a cat toy. But a mission, lived honestly over time, is harder to fake — and that’s the part I’m betting the whole brand on.
So, this is Dupih
I don’t know how big this will get. I’m not going to pretend I have that figured out.
But I know I couldn’t build a pet brand and act like the millions of animals outside don’t exist. I couldn’t sell collars and ignore the dogs with no one to put one on. I couldn’t build a store without building meaning into it from the first day.
Maybe one day, a simple pet order — a toy, a collar, a bag of treats — helps change the life of a street animal that nobody else was looking out for.
That’s the future I’m trying to build. If it resonates with you, follow the journey, share this, or better yet — reach out and let’s do something about it together.
Sources
- 20th Livestock Census (2019) — India’s stray dog count of ~1.53 crore (15.3 million). The News Minute · PIB / Stray Animals
- Mars Petcare, State of Pet Homelessness Index — ~62 million free-roaming dogs in India; 77% of Indians see a street dog weekly. State of Pet Homelessness — India factsheet
- World Health Organization — dogs cause up to 99% of human rabies transmissions; India accounts for ~36% of global rabies deaths (18,000–20,000 deaths/year). WHO India — Rabies
- WHO — India’s National Action Plan for dog-mediated rabies elimination by 2030. WHO News
- Government of India — Animal Birth Control (Dogs) Rules, 2023 (local bodies responsible for humane stray dog management). PIB — Stray Animals
