Clove Dental aims to grow our chain of clinics, expand their laboratory, and invest in innovative consumer products while leveraging technological advancements in dentistry. (Photo: Clove Dental)
Clove Dental, the most prominent dental clinic chain in Asia aims to become the world’s most extensive and most loved dental brand. We interview Amar Singh, the founder-CEO and Lt Gen Vimal Arora, Chief Clinical Officer of Clove Dental.
Clove is a chain of multi-specialty dental clinics based in India, targeting Indian consumers. Clove offers high-quality dental care (from scaling to implants to surgeries) in conveniently located dental centers across India.
Amar Singh, Founder & CEO of Global Dental Services (CLOVE brand), is a seasoned executive and entrepreneur with over twenty-five years of experience in entrepreneurial ventures and large corporate organizations. Before founding Global Dental and Clove Dental in India, Mr. Singh ran a supply chain software company based in San Francisco, California.
Rajeev Chitguppi: We have heard that you come from a Tech background. What made you decide to venture into dentistry?
Amar Singh: The inspiration came from a personal incident when I accompanied my wife for her dental check-up. The quality of service and the customer experience were so below average that it made me think about how she could have had a better experience.
To provide consumers in India with high-quality oral health at reasonable pricing, we launched our business in 2011, and today, we are India's largest dental chain with over 350 state-of-the-art clinics across the country backed by a fleet of 850 plus highly trained dental experts who serve more than 40,000 patients every month.
How is dental health awareness in India, and in this regard, where do you see Clove in the next five years?
90% of Indians have dental concerns but do not pay much attention to them until it reaches a state where pain brings them to a clinic.
We at Clove aim to make a difference in every household by offering world-class dental experiences each time we touch a patient's life.
We have mobile vans that travel around, provide urgent care, and increase awareness. Additionally, we operate ten charitable clinics that charge a very nominal fee.
The journey will progress from 350+ to 1,000 clinics over the next five years, along with the latest technological advancements in our dental chain.
We want to expand our network and deliver the best oral health and dental care to every Indian consumer. Our vision is to be Asia's (and even the world's) most extensive and most loved dental brand.
What were the challenges you had to overcome when you started?
Looking at the kind of services we offer to our customers keeping in mind the highest standards of safety, sterilization, the materials we use for treatments, and the overall patient experience, it has been a battle between quality and cost.
Unfortunately, dentistry has been undervalued. The historical format of independent dental clinics has set the prices at such a low bar that it took us a while to sensitize our patients about the quality and safety at competitive pricing. As the business started growing, we gradually reached a point where economies of scale started playing on our side, but until then, we never compromised on our service delivery.
Clove has become Asia's most prominent dental clinic chain. What has helped you grow to this level?
The two pillars that we based our business model around our quality and transparency. We have a rigorous method of hiring. We pick and choose the best talent. Over the past 12 years, we have mastered the training methodologies – we make them unlearn and learn in a way that uses their skills and strengths. We have standardized the products we use in our chain across the country. Our quality control measures are very intense – we may be the only dental chain that does peer reviews of cases.
Almost 25000 peer reviews are done monthly, where every treatment gets reviewed. We use computer vision and AI-based software technologies to monitor safety functions at our clinics.
We have made considerable investments across the entire value chain - software, dental laboratory, sourcing, distribution, quality management systems, products, recruiting, training dental assistants, etc.
Our mix of people, processes, and products at transparent pricing has helped us grow to this level.
You have recently been funded. What are your next-level plans?
Dentistry is an underfunded industry in our nation. The dental care market is expected to grow annually by 3.73%, and this funding was a milestone for us to go forward in the industry.
We aim to grow our chain of clinics, expand our laboratory, and invest in innovative consumer products while leveraging technological advancement in dentistry. Everyone must prioritize their oral health, and in days to come, we will focus more on providing quality service that is easy on the consumers' pockets.
Our focus is to be there in Tier 1, 2, and 3 cities, but we also have ambitions to expand into rural areas with even more stringent oral health regulations. We aim to grow from 23 cities to over 100 cities across India. We need additional medical professionals willing to visit remote settlements, especially in rural areas. Today, we already provide care to underprivileged people across cities with subsidized oral health care.
Dr. Vimal Arora:
Lt Gen Dr. Vimal Arora PVSM AVSM VSM & Bar; OSRE (Oman) is presently working as the Chief Clinical Officer of Clove Dental Chain in India. Gen Vimal has 40 yrs history of working in the Army Dental Corps.
Can you share how the most decorated and distinguished Lt General Vimal Arora, with four presidential medals (PVSM, AVSM, VSM & Bar (Retd)), decided to turn into the Chief Clinical Officer of Clove Dental?
General Arora: Serving in the Armed Forces prepares one to respond to any evolving situation. It gives you an advantage over others as you are exposed to working in a hierarchal system and working as a team with synergy at all levels. Working with diverse people and mindsets and rallying towards a common goal comes naturally after serving in the Army Dental Corps. Further, I have never been a passenger in my life. I have always strived to achieve the highest standards for my officers in the Corps at all echelons. That makes life easier when settling into a new environment based on your skills and your thinking, which has evolved over time.
Adhering to the highest principles of discipline, commitment, professional conduct, and a sense of pride while adhering to ethical values and the highest ethos has been my guiding light for all endeavors. And I am fortunate to be a part of an organization that reflects the same value system. And I have been lucky to have moved to this Dental group, Clove Dental, where I could inculcate these values into our young colleagues to give them a purpose with a clearly defined goal of patient service.
Presently, I have taken the task of establishing and bringing ethical and the best clinical practices within the realm of the commoner at affordable prices at Clove Dental. My experience of managing and laying guidelines for the best practices in the Army has come in handy to ensure the core values are maintained.
Further, Clove Dental, as a group, follows ethical working in every sphere, whether dealing with the patients or the doctors.
My firm belief is that success comes your way if one is true to one's core values and ethics and stays committed to the cause.
India has a large community of independent dentists; How did you get them together under one umbrella, and has it worked well for you?
As you rightly said, India produces more than 30,000 dentists yearly from more than 300+ colleges. There are very few colleges, which are providing wholesome teaching to students. The young doctors are rich in academics but need hands-on experience and communication skills.
We employ the largest number of dentists today, and with our expansion plans of hiring another 1000+ dentists this year, we have a task at hand to make them proficient quickly.
Quality runs deep as the core value across our organization. We unite our dentists through the common thread of 'focus on patient care with ethical treatments.' Further, we manage their performance through quality audits, helping them improve and learn while working.
We decided that each of our 350-plus Clinics will be owned and operated by Clove Dental and not on a 'franchise or partnership model' to deliver quality treatments consistently. There is immense respect for each clinician; the whole team walks as one with an 'ownership model.' Doctors enjoy great freedom and carry on their professional tasks based on their clinical judgment.
How is Clove Dental redefining the landscape of dentistry in India?
At Clove Dental, we rigidly ensure compliance with all safety and sterilization protocols. We have our trademarked 'sterilization protocol' practiced in every surgery. Every Clove Dental doctor is aware of the stringent quality checks on sterilization, carrying out the 'asepto' before every patient, ensuring 'radiation control' in each surgery, and carrying out 'spore testing in every clinic' to make sure that the surgery is sterile. These practices do not exist even in the best clinics worldwide, and we take pride in giving our patients these facilities backed by our commitment to our profession. This is our commitment that the patient gets the best.
When a patient comes to us for treatment and sees such refined protocols, he also expects the same from his other care providers, which makes it mandatory for our neighboring dentists across 26 cities to provide the same standards and to stay in the competition. This has driven the much-needed change in the landscape of dentistry.
At Clove Dental, we share uniform pricing with the patient, which is visible to the patient and ensures that they are never overcharged. The computerized records and Clove Dental guarantee of using genuine materials from reputable companies and specialists performing the specialized treatments ensure that Clove Dental delivers what it promises. These are the changes in the 'landscape' which are making sure that people put their faith in Clove Dental for their repeat treatments.
We have a whole team of specialists for every discipline who enjoy a name and reputation in dentistry, and we provide in-house training in the Clove culture of 'Patient first.' Advanced specialty treatments like Adult Incognito Orthodontics, Guided Template Implantology, and smile designing form the backbone in addition to routine dentistry.
Stringent ethical norms are in place, and accountability is the bottom line of every action to ensure that our patients get the best professional services, which makes Clove Dental the preferred choice for super-specialized treatments.
How do you stand apart from other dental brands?
As India's largest dental network, we take responsibility for being pioneers on multiple fronts. Some of them are as below:
a) AI monitored dental chair and surgery sterilization – the first time in India.
b) Every patient's dental details are digitized and stored in proprietary software.
c) One out of every 2 cases is reviewed by qualified dentists for diagnosis, treatment planning, and treatment protocol at the backend.
d) Bi-monthly review of all Clove clinics by a quality control team for Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) adherence on Bio-Medical waste management, 4-step sterilization, and 10x safety protocol.
e) All Clove Clinics are company owned and operated, and all Clove dentists are full-time employees (not on revenue sharing model).
f) At Clove, 70% of the dentists are empowered women dentists who manage the clinics end to end.
g) 75% of all dentists working at Clove are Post Graduates of clinical specialties
h) Only internally accredited dentists are allowed to do clinical practice at Clove Dental clinics.
i) Transparent digital software-based treatment pricing.
j) Clove uses only 100% ADA-approved equipment and dental treatment material (consumables).
k) At Clove, we believe only the best will do for our patients and have all the globally re-known brands under one roof, i.e., Invisalign, ClearConnect (Straumann), LoveMySmile, 3M Braces, Daemon Braces, etc.
How do your expansion plans impact dentists?
Clove Dental today operates out of 350 clinics in 26 cities across the country. We have plans to build 1000 clinics, which will be the game-changer for the dentists and dental colleges, the profession, and the dental suppliers.
The success of the Clove Dental model is seeing a rapid inflow of funds in the country. Many companies in the recent past have raised millions of dollars and invested in oral health, opening new avenues and thereby improving the employment avenues in dentistry. With scarce employment opportunities, many dental colleges are experiencing a massive downfall in yearly numbers, forcing many dental institutions to shut down.
The thrust in dental hiring with a renewed focus on quality by the dentists led by the dental chains spells good days ahead for dental manufacturers and dental suppliers. The DSO model has yet to be successful in India. In the coming years, with the entry of many new players, there will be a massive thrust in this field, and we will witness rapid growth, thereby infusing new life into the profession.
The DSOs bring fresh breath with excellent working conditions, dignity and respect, and handsome salaries, further incentivizing performance. Dentistry has never had it so good as this period which is dawning now, and those who can make changes to their thinking and join the bandwagon are sure to make rich gains both in name and fame and revenue.
The openings in the field of support roles in dentistry have increased 1000 times; because of this, many dentists are excelling in training, quality, marketing, HR, finance, legal, IT, and patient care.
Clove boasts of being the best hirer of these talents, the true game-changers in the profession. Tomorrow's dentists are going to be empowered not only in their profession but also managing their businesses and carving out new opportunities for the profession.
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