The chance of you having cavities is very high. 

According to the Borgen Project, around 9 in every 10 Indians will suffer from dental cavities. Around 60 to 80% of children too will suffer from cavities that too at a young age. Another estimate is that 30% of the children have misaligned jaws and teeth. 

With India being the home to some of the highest oral cancers in the world, it is high time now that we start paying attention to the issues of oral health. Poor oral health along with tobacco use and a sugary diet is the reason behind the bad oral health of Indians. 

To solve the issues of oral hygiene, Hitesh Kakrani and Dr Jatin Kakrani started Smiles.ai in 2019. The startup is a multispeciality dental care platform. The platform offers affordable and high-quality dental care through online consultations, at-home services and more.

They have built a solid base of 100+ offline dentists and have created an invisible aligner business on top of that. They conduct 5000+ diagnoses every month across the cities of Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune and Indore. 

Their Invisible Aligner treatment offers a great alternative to the traditionally available option of braces for smile correction. This Bengaluru-based startup was part of 100X VC’s 2019 portfolio. They had received a seed fund worth $1 million from Sequoia Capital India, Chiratae Ventures and others.

At the start of the year, they had received $23 million in its Series A round led by Alpha Wave Incubation, which is managed by Falcon Edge Capital. This round also saw angel investment from  Shark Tank India’s Peyush Bansal and Amit Chaudhary (cofounders of Lenskart), Aakrit Vaish (CEO of Haptik), Miten Sampat (of CRED), Revant Bhate (Co-founder of Mosaic Wellness), Sambhav Rakhyan (of Willis Towers Watson), Wami Capital and MBX Capital amongst others. 

The funds will be used to expand their presence in India. This is especially needed as 72% of Indian live in rural areas where access to a dental clinic is marginal. The Indian dental care market is valued at $4 to $5 million. Smiles.ai wants to capture this market along with expanding to other international markets such as the Middle East and North Africa.

Will startups like Smiles.ai be able to improve India’s oral health problems?