Helion invests Rs. 27 cr in dental care chain Denty’s for expansion of operations
Helion, the multi-stage, India-focused venture fund with over $600 million under management has pumped in a Series A investment of Rs. 27 crore in Denty’s, a multi-speciality dental care chain.
The five-year-old Denty’s has over 100,000 patients across 10 clinics in 5 cities of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The dental chain will utilise the funds to expand its presence across the country, and bring up the number of clinics to 150, in five years. It launched its first clinic in 2009 in Vijayawada. All its clinics are paperless dental centre; having implementing digitized diagnostic imagery integrated with an electronic health records system.
Sanjeev Agarwal, senior managing director, Helion and Ritesh Banglani, director, Helion will join the board of the company.
Helion has consistently focused on scalable, capital-efficient healthcare businesses with a bias for single-speciality business models. Denty’s proved to be a good fit to this investment philosophy. Previous investments include EyeQ, a chain of specialty eye hospitals and LifeCell, India’s largest stem cell bank.
The dental chain Denty’s integrates technology that enables evidence-based dentistry for value conscious patients across tier 1 and tier 2 towns in India. Dental care is a high-growth segment owing to the ample supply of high quality clinical talent, potential to standardise clinical procedures and the relatively low cost of setting up a dental practice. Added to this is the rising incidence of dental illnesses, irrespective of age or geography, according to Dr. Sekhar Chennupati co-founder and managing director and Dr. Rajesh Nandipati, founders Denty’s.
While Dr. Sekhar Chennupati, is an oral and maxillo-facial surgeon with an experience of over a decade and a half, Dr. Rajesh Nandipati is a medical doctor with a master’s degree in Healthcare Management from the US.
Speaking on the investment, Sanjeev Aggarwal, senior managing director, Helion said, that since the focus of Denty’s was on clinical excellence combined with repeatable and scalable operational processes gave us the confidence in the team’s ability to create a high-quality dental practice nationwide.
“The Series A funding from Helion will fuel the replication of our proven, scalable model across the country, enabling us to reach out to a larger population. There is an acute need for standardised delivery of dental care and the existing infrastructure is only touching the periphery of this opportunity, said Dr. Chennupati.
