India's national Animal Birth Control initiative — the sterilisation and vaccination scheme that needs identity to finally work.
The Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme is India's national approach to managing stray dog populations. Run by municipal corporations under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, it sterilises and vaccinates stray dogs against rabies, then releases them back to their original location.
It exists as a humane, non-lethal alternative to culling — sterilisation reduces population growth over time, and rabies vaccination directly addresses India's outsized share of the global rabies burden.
Field teams trap stray dogs from a targeted area.
The dog is spayed or neutered and given an anti-rabies injection.
A small V-notch is cut in the left ear as a visual marker. Not machine-readable.
The dog goes back to its original location. No permanent digital record is created.
The ABC programme's biggest operational gap isn't policy — it's identity. The ear notch is visible in good light, on cooperative dogs. That's not a database.
Dogs re-caught and re-sterilisedField teams can't reliably tell a treated dog from an untreated one. Resources are wasted on dogs that don't need intervention.
Untreated dogs missedWhile time and budget go to already-treated dogs, others in the same area are never reached at all.
No vaccination historyA vaccinated dog can't prove it. A dog that bites someone can't have its rabies status verified quickly.
"The programme has the right intent. It just can't see which dogs it has already reached."
Muzzl's biometric identity system gives every dog registered under the ABC programme a permanent, verifiable record any smartphone can read. Field teams scan the dog's nose before catch — if it's already in the system, they know its history instantly.
No scanner required. No hardware procurement. No dependency on an ear notch in poor light. Just a phone, a nose, and a database that grows with every registration.
This is the gap Muzzl is built to close — for feeders, for shelters, for municipal ABC teams, and for every dog they collectively serve.
Every dog you register builds a database that makes India's animal welfare system smarter.