This Indian Startup Wants to Create an Organized Industry for Dentists The company had started with two dentists and today has 33 dentists on its platform
By Sneha Banerjee •
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Over a lakh of doctors graduate every year in the country and out of this 30,000 are dentists alone. But unlike other professional courses, there aren't many offer letters pouring in for this category of doctors. This startup aims to become an aggregator in this space!
MobiDent, a Bengaluru based start-up started in 2014 by Vivek Madappa, a serial entrepreneur and Dr Devaiah, a dentist by profession, has launched "Dental clinic in a suitcase' to deliver inexpensive dental care at homes in Bangalore.
In an interview with Entrepreneur Media, Vivek opened up about this concept of organizing this haphazard space of oral care.
Why Dental Care
"India is a land of paradoxes that has the largest pool of young talented generation with 1st world thinking, attitude & behaviour, with 2nd world leadership and 3rd world infrastructure. If India has to leap frog a generation and emerge a developed nation in the next 5 years, we need not be constrained by the colonial baggage of safety & security,"
"A society is defined by quality of health care available to its people. India has the largest number of doctors yet health care is not affordable or accessible to a large population. Unfortunately in India dental care is affordable & accessible to only 10% of the population. If dental care has to reach 90% of the population it has to inexpensive and accessible to all. This is possible only through disruptive innovation," Vivek adds.
MobiDent's business model has been executed across three verticals – Homes ; Corporates and hospital chains across Bangalore, Mysore, Pune and Ahmedabad. Over the last 24 months, Mobident has served 44,000 patients across all three verticals ( Corporates- 400 Dental camps, tie up with 19 hospitals and serviced 250 families at home)
How are reliable doctors selected on this platform?
To deal with the challenge of hiring and employing dentists in large numbers MobiDent has set up MobiDent Academy for Dental Excellence (M.A.D.E). Dentist with over 5 years' experience go through a structured training in social, communication; presentation and grooming skills required to build a trusting connection with a patient and their families .
"Home dental care is extremely complex so invests a lot on hiring & training dentists. Only dentist who have qualified through psychometric tests, above 3 years experience, checked more than 2000 patients and 2500 procedures are certified be home dentist," Vivek said.
From 3 to 33!
The company had started with two dentists and today has 33 dentists on its platform. "The challenge of creating a new industry is to find talent who can work in the new ecosystem. A doctor is used to working either in a clinic or a hospital. A doctor is not familiar at working as an employee in a structured organisational environment like the same way engineers or graduates work in an IT or a BPO company.
Talking about challneges and talent scouting Vivek said, "For a dentist to be perceived good, they need to have knowledge and skills that build TRUST to be invited home. The challenge for MobiDent was to find dentists as most have only experience of delivering dental care at a clinic and not at homes."
The company's near term target is to roll out our services in 20 top towns in year 1 and 200 town in 3 years by hiring 3000 dentists and train 1000 dental hygienists.
Over the last 2 years the company has organised dental camps in over 400+ companies in Bngalore and have treated more than 44,000 people. They are dental partners with more than 20 hospitals which include names like Columbia Asia & Sayadhri hospitals.
