When Amarinder Singh, 56, moved back to India in 2011 after nearly three decades in the US, he was clear about one thing: He did not want to build another technology startup.
A veteran who had spent years in the tech ecosystem, Singh says he consciously avoided returning to what was most familiar. Instead, he wanted to build something rooted in India and something that could create social impact alongside financial returns.
Healthcare, education and energy emerged as the three sectors he considered seriously. Education was ruled out because Singh believed India continued to place a disproportionate value on formal degrees over vocational skills. Energy required operating in remote geographies, something he was unwilling to do immediately after relocating from California to Delhi.
That left healthcare.
Within healthcare, dentistry stood out because of the directness of the business model. Singh says he was drawn to a segment where the relationship between doctor and patient remained central, without too many layers of intermediation.
He also saw a massive white space.
At the time, India’s dental market was overwhelmingly fragmented, dominated by standalone neighbourhood clinics with little standardisation in quality, service or patient experience. Organised chains were virtually non-existent.
“We were literally starting with a whiteboard,” Singh says. “There was no large dental chain in India at the time.”
Fifteen years later, Clove Dental has emerged as one of India’s largest organised dental-care chains, with around 715 clinics across 26 cities across India, a growing oral-care products business and more than $215 million (Rs 1700 crore) raised across funding rounds.
The company’s rise mirrors a broader shift unfolding in Indian healthcare, where fragmented, doctor-led practices are slowly giving way to professionally managed chains. Yet dentistry has remained particularly difficult to organise because trust rests heavily on individual practitioners rather than brands.
That was precisely the challenge Singh wanted to solve.
Building a dentist-first business
Singh’s approach to the business was shaped by first-principles thinking. The core insight, he says, was deceptively simple: In dentistry, the entire value chain revolves around the interaction between a dentist and a patient.
“All the value creation happens when a patient is sitting in front of the dentist,” he says. “If you can organise and scale that relationship, then everything else can be built around it.”
That philosophy shaped Clove’s expansion strategy. Rather than beginning with ancillary businesses such as software, distribution or training, the company started with clinics and soon built the ecosystem around them.
Its fifth location was not another clinic but a dental lab to make sure they had the right products reaching their customers. The company realised early that if crowns and bridges failed on quality, patients would blame the Clove brand, not an outsourced supplier. Distribution businesses followed to ensure doctors received supplies on time, along with internal training systems and recruitment pipelines.
Even today, Singh insists Clove remains “a dentist-first company”.
“In our company, every doctor is addressed as ‘doctor’,” he says. “The culture is built around respecting doctors because if doctors are happy and competent, patients will eventually be happy.”
That focus on standardisation has become central to Clove’s operating model. Around 78 percent of the company’s dentists hold MDS qualifications, while others are experienced BDS graduates. New hires undergo internal accreditation and supervised evaluations before independently treating patients.
Singh compares dentistry to any skill built through repetition. Once a dentist has performed several hundred procedures, he says, competence levels rise sharply for routine treatments.
The company’s backend systems are designed to make that clinical consistency scalable across hundreds of clinics.
The Economics of Organised Dentistry
India’s dental market has historically been dominated by standalone neighbourhood clinics. Clove’s bet was that organised dentistry could work if clinic economics remained disciplined.
The opportunity itself is substantial. According to a report by the Indian Dental Association, India has more than 2,92,000 dental professionals, over 300 dental institutes and upwards of 5,000 dental laboratories. Rising awareness around oral health, cosmetic dentistry and aligners is also expanding the market beyond basic dental care. Industry estimates peg the broader Indian oral-care and dental market at roughly $2 billion, making it one of the faster-growing segments within healthcare.
A typical Clove clinic spans 800 to 1,000 square feet and houses two dental chairs. The average investment per clinic is around Rs 40 lakh, split roughly equally between interiors and equipment.
Clinics usually break even within 10 to 14 months. At that stage, monthly revenue is around Rs 4.75 lakh, while mature clinics can generate about Rs 10 lakh in monthly revenue.
The real operating leverage comes from network maturity.
Nearly half of Clove’s current clinics have been opened in the past three years. As these clinics mature simultaneously, revenue growth is expected to accelerate.
Singh says the clinical business generated around Rs 450 crore in revenue in FY26 and could reach roughly Rs 600 crore this year as newer clinics ramp up. Beyond clinics, the company has also expanded into oral-care products, aligners, distribution and cosmetic dentistry solutions.
One of its newer products, Whistle Glow, targets tooth discoloration caused by tea, coffee and Indian dietary habits. Singh believes cosmetic oral care could become a meaningful adjacent category over time.
Investors, too, saw the attractiveness of the business model, though not immediately.
“We like healthcare and in particular single specialty,” says Gaurav Sharma, head of India investment business at Investcorp. Sharma first met Singh in 2015 but took time to build conviction around the business.
“There was no precedent in this sector and we liked the fact that capex is low, unlike for say eye clinics where the per clinic cost can be Rs 10 crore for Lasik,” Sharma says.
The long gestation of investor confidence became a recurring theme in Clove’s journey. Before Covid-19, the company was weeks away from finalising an investment when the pandemic disrupted markets and the deal collapsed.
Singh admits he initially took the withdrawal personally. “It felt like being left at the altar,” he says.
But the investor eventually returned after the pandemic and completed the investment, reinforcing what Singh sees as a defining characteristic of institutional capital: Investors may step back because of timing or macro uncertainty, but continue tracking businesses they fundamentally believe in.
Bet on Trust
Scaling dentistry is fundamentally different from scaling many other consumer businesses. Unlike food delivery or ecommerce, the experience depends heavily on clinical trust and practitioner consistency.
That is why Clove’s model has focused as much on culture and training as on expansion.
The company runs internal accreditation systems in which doctors shadow senior practitioners and undergo supervised evaluations before independently treating patients. Singh says the process resembles hospital-style credentialing more than the hiring systems of traditional dental clinics.
For investors, that operational rigour is becoming increasingly important as organised healthcare gains scale in India.
Clove now appears to be entering a new phase where the aggressive clinic expansion of recent years is beginning to translate into operating leverage and stronger revenue growth.
For Singh, however, the original thesis remains unchanged.
“We are still fundamentally a dentist-first company,” he says. “If the doctor-patient relationship works, everything else follows.”