HiPaws: How Saurabh and Khushboo Left Their IT Careers to Rescue Homeless Dogs

For most people, seeing a homeless dog struggling on the street might lead to a moment of concern. For Saurabh Bhatnagar and his wife Khushboo, one such experience eventually changed the direction of their entire lives.

After watching their own pet dog fight cancer, the couple began thinking about the many homeless dogs facing serious illnesses without anyone to care for them. They started with small rescues and gradually learned how to provide medical care and rehabilitation.

In 2018, that effort became HiPaws, a Delhi-based animal welfare organisation focused on rescuing critically ill, injured and abandoned dogs. Today, the organisation provides medical treatment, rehabilitation and lifelong care to dogs that often have nowhere else to go.

It Started With Their Own Pet

The beginning of HiPaws was personal.

Saurabh and Khushboo had watched their own dog battle cancer. That experience exposed them to the emotional and practical challenges involved in treating a serious illness in a dog.

But it also made them look beyond their own pet.

They began noticing homeless dogs on the streets suffering from cancer, tumours, injuries and other serious medical conditions. Many of these animals had little chance of receiving treatment because they had no owners to take them to a veterinarian.

The couple initially had no extensive background in animal rescue. They started with individual cases, gradually learning about rescue, treatment and rehabilitation along the way.

From Small Rescues to HiPaws

What began as individual rescues eventually became a larger organisation.

HiPaws was founded in 2018 with a focus on dogs that are particularly difficult to care for on the streets. These include dogs with severe injuries, blindness, paralysis, tumours, cancer, amputations and other conditions that can make independent survival extremely difficult.

The organisation now operates a Recovery Home in North-West Delhi, where dogs requiring long-term medical attention can stay safely.

According to HiPaws, the organisation has saved more than 1,500 lives, carried out more than 500 surgeries and treated over 200 tumours. Its recovery home currently provides permanent care to more than 65 resident dogs.

For some of these animals, rescue is not the end of the story.

It is the beginning of a life where they can receive treatment, rehabilitation, food and daily care.

Saurabh Left a 13-Year IT Career

Building an organisation around animal rescue also meant making a major personal decision.

Saurabh had spent 13 years working in the IT sector before eventually leaving his career to dedicate himself fully to HiPaws. The decision meant moving away from a conventional professional path and towards work that required dealing with injured and critically ill animals every day.

It was not simply a career change.

The organisation needed constant attention, from arranging rescues and medical treatment to looking after dogs that could not be returned to the streets.

Over time, what had started as a personal response to their pet’s illness became a full-time mission.

Project Annapurna Feeds 500+ Dogs Every Day

HiPaws’ work is not limited to emergency rescue.

During the 2020 lockdown, the couple launched Project Annapurna to provide food to stray dogs when access to regular food sources became difficult.

The initiative has continued beyond the lockdown.

HiPaws currently says Annapurna provides freshly prepared meals to more than 500 community dogs every day.

This is important because feeding is one of the simplest ways to support street animals, but maintaining a daily food programme for hundreds of dogs requires consistent resources and coordination.

Annapurna therefore became another major part of the organisation’s work alongside rescue and medical care.

The Dogs They Rescue Are Often the Ones Others Avoid

One of HiPaws’ defining areas of work is caring for animals with complex medical needs.

Its Recovery Home houses dogs that have survived road accidents, abuse, infections, paralysis and serious illnesses. Some require post-surgery recovery, physiotherapy or lifelong special-needs support.

The organisation’s website features cases such as Sultan, a dog diagnosed with bone cancer who required an amputation, and Jimmy, who lost an eye after cruelty and could no longer safely survive on the streets.

These are precisely the kinds of cases that can be difficult to place through ordinary adoption channels.

For HiPaws, rehabilitation does not end simply because an animal is difficult to adopt.

HiPaws Has Become a Larger Animal Welfare Mission

What began with two people trying to help individual dogs has grown into a structured animal welfare organisation.

Today, HiPaws works across rescue, emergency medical care, rehabilitation, feeding and lifelong protection. Its work is supported by a team, volunteers and donors who help sustain the animals’ treatment and daily needs.

The organisation also describes its larger goal as creating a more compassionate and sustainable environment for community dogs.

That means the work is not only about taking animals off the street. It also involves giving them medical attention, helping them recover and, where possible, finding them safe long-term homes.

For dogs that cannot return to the streets, the Recovery Home becomes their permanent family.

A Career Change That Became a Life’s Work

Saurabh and Khushboo did not start HiPaws with a large organisation behind them.

They started after experiencing the illness of their own pet and gradually began helping dogs they found around them.

Years later, that decision has developed into an organisation that has treated thousands of animals and continues to care for dogs that require support most people may never see.

The scale of the work has changed, but the basic idea remains the same: a dog should not be denied treatment simply because it does not have an owner.

The Savage Humans Take

Saurabh and Khushboo’s story is ultimately about a decision that changed the direction of their lives.

One had spent 13 years in IT. Together, they could have continued with their careers and helped animals whenever they had the time.

Instead, they built an organisation around them.

HiPaws now rescues critically ill dogs, provides medical care, supports permanent residents and feeds hundreds of community dogs every day.

The most striking part is perhaps not that they chose animal rescue as a career.

It is that they continued expanding the idea after the first rescue.

One dog led to another. One rescue became an organisation. And a personal experience with cancer became a reason to help animals who otherwise might never receive the same chance at treatment.

Follow The Savage Humans for more stories of people turning personal experiences into meaningful action.