Happy Animals Association was born out of the shutting down of People for Animals, Pune Unit. People for Animals, Pune Unit was started in 1995 by Manoj Oswal as the lone activist. The team expanded and so did the activities. Starting with awareness in 1996, the team expanded the scope of work to law enforcement and rescues. It started its ambulance service in 2001 using a rented tempo. In next few years the organization was the largest and most active PFA in India. It was into litigation, inspections, animal birth control, wildlife rescues, awareness programs, volunteer outreach programs, corporate outreaches, promotion of veganism, animal rescue units, adoption camps and disaster relief.  The team and operations was comparable to a mid sized corporate. The units under it were

ALERT – Animal Law Enforcement and Rescue Team.

SMART – Shelter management and rescue team

ARAOT – Animal Rights Awareness and Outreach Team

BWRU : Bird and Wildlife Rescue Unit

Vegan Outreach : A full fledged volunteer group for awareness on veganism was supported by PFA.

This organization ran smoothly and grew rapidly over 22 years and so did the number of employees and volunteers. People for Animals had a very clear policy that each person in the core team must be vegetarian and must work towards going vegan. The organization actively promoted veganism. This created discontent among some of the core members who wanted the issues of veganism to be diluted.

This team frustrated over the constant reminder on cruelty free lifestyle grouped and insisted that Manoj Oswal be removed as the unit on basis of frivolous issues. To diffuse the tension Manoj Oswal was promoted to be the head of PFA Maharashtra and directed to setup one unit in each district of Maharashtra. This lead to more teams being built and work started fanatically at other cities and locations. This also did not go well with the dissenting team who wanted him to be out of PFA. Meanwhile, the dissenting team had huge disputes among themselves and no one wanted to take on the operations, bank account, employees, contracts, obligations, liabilities and responsibility of running current responsibilities. With annual turnover of around 10 million rupees per year, keeping the unit running was not easy task, particularly raising funds and running operations across 4 several Hospital/ABC Units. This dispute continued for around one and a half years.

One day Smt Maneka Gandhi, abruptly froze the bank account of PFA Pune leading to sudden end of all operations. The receivables and committed/expected donations could not be received while liabilities remained to be paid. Mr Manoj Oswal, personally took loans and paid most of the liabilities of the organization from his personal bank account over a period of next 1 year.  The ambulances of the organization rotted where they were. The animal shelter was abandoned, most animals released back and some moved to another shelter. The assets of the organization looted and taken by whoever could get hand in whatever they could. 

In the meantime, Happy Animals was incorporated with an aim to regroup the existing resources and resume where PFA Pune had left. Happy Animals aims to play a vital role in the national movement for animal rights.