Dental Care Startup Smiles.ai Secures $23 Mn To Build Digital Dental Care Network

Dental care startup Smiles.ai has raised $23 Mn (INR 171 Cr)  in a Series A funding round led by Alpha Wave Incubation.

Existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Chiratae Ventures participated in the round along with MBX Capital and Wami Capital. Angel investors Peyush Bansal and Amit Chaudhary (Lenskart), Aakrit Vaish  (Haptik), Revant Bhate (Mosaic Wellness), Miten Sampat (CRED), Sambhav Rakhyan (WTW) also took participation in the round. 

Founded in 2019 by Hitesh Kakrani and Jatin Kakrani, Smiles.ai offers dental care products and services to its customers with its proprietary technology platforms and onboarded healthcare professionals. 

The startup will deploy the funds towards expanding its national footprint, strengthening leadership team and building new tech-driven dental solutions. 

“India’s dental care market has remained highly fragmented and without any significant technological disruption for decades. However, now with increasing awareness, increasing disposable income and rising millennial aspirations, the industry is going through a transition and we are leading this change in India by combining dental care, operations and technology expertise ” said Hitesh Kakrani, cofounder of Smiles.ai. 

The Indian dental care market is estimated to be worth around $4 Bn and is expected to grow at a rate of 30% year-on-year. India has the second-highest number of dentists in the world with over 2.6 lakh registered with the Dental Council of India (DCI). In 2020, it achieved a dentists-to-population ratio of 1:5,000.

Despite this, rural regions in the country have a dentists-to-population ratio of less than 1:50,000. Every year, nearly 27,000 dentists join the workforce from 313 registered dental colleges in the country. According to data from 2019, only 3% of registered dentists are employed in government services.

“The dental care market in India is valued at $4-5Bn, growing at 15% CAGR. This is driven by a young population’s increasing awareness of health and aspiration to look better,” said Ranjith Menon, managing director at Chiratae Ventures.

“Technology adoption and digitisation will lead the transformation of dental practice putting patient convenience and comfort at the centre in delivering products and services,” he added. 

Earlier this week, dental tech startup Toothsi had raised $9 Mn (INR 66.6 Cr) in a debt funding round led by Stride Ventures. 

Then we saw D2C dental care startup Snazzy had raised $2.2 Mn in a seed funding round from YCombinator, Form Capital, Goodwater Capitan and ANIM Fund. Kunal Shah (founder, CRED), Bobby Goodlatte (Stripe and Coinbase angel investor) and others also participated in the round.