Private equity-backed Oracare Group has announced a partnership with Philippine dental chain, Uy Dental Clinic Group (UDC) to secure a footprint in four South East Asia (SEA) countries comprising Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. The partnership is said to make the Singapore-headquartered dental group South East Asia’s largest dental services group by geographical presence after joining forces with UDC.
UDC is a multi-specialty oral care services and dental diagnostics group which reportedly operates the largest dental network in Metro Manila of 17 dental clinics served by a team of 54 dental professionals. According the Oracare, the alliance underscores its approach of supporting dental entrepreneurs to scale and professionalise their business, providing foundations to enable future growth and profitability improvement, whilst enhancing patient care and treatment outcome.
With UDC in its network, Oracare’s reach in SEA has increased to 62 dental clinics with approximately 652 staff and clinicians, from 45 dental clinics and 533 employees previously. According to Oracare, it has gained access into the growth opportunities that the under-served Philippine dental market offers, where the dentist to patient ratio remains relatively low at 1:4,000 compared to developed economies like Singapore and the United States with ratios of 1:2,200 and 1:1,700 respectively.
“Oracare is now SEA’s largest dental group in terms of the number of countries through our strategic alliance with UDC. UDC is one of the most well recognised dental brands in Philippines and we are excited about what the future holds for our partnership, particularly given the relatively low penetration rate of dental care in the country and the untapped growth opportunities in other cities beyond Metro Manila, such as Davao, Cebu and General Santos, where UDC currently does not operate in,” said co-founder and CEO of Oracare Group, Mr Leon Luai.
“We will work closely with UDC to enhance group-wide growth and synergy through the robust and professionalised corporate structure and governance framework that we offer, which allows our network partners to benefit from the scale economies and technology-driven advantages of the Oracare platform whilst reducing the time spent on non-clinical operations. We have proven the efficacy of our business model with MOS Dental in Thailand in 2019 and are confident that we can replicate this with UDC,” Luai added.
“We were intrigued and inspired by the success story of MOS Dental in Thailand, where with Oracare’s support, it doubled its number of clinics and profitability whilst still placing patient care at the forefront. We believe this partnership with Oracare will amplify UDC’s capabilities and leverage the expertise and resources of both entities to offer top-notch dental services and innovative solutions as well as a broader range of dental care products,” said founder and CEO of UDC, Dr Charlston Uy.
Previously in 2019, Oracare acquired a controlling stake in MOS Dental, the second largest dental group in Bangkok and has helped grow MOS Dental’s network of clinics from 14 to 30 today. MOS Dental was given the support to implement and upgrade its professional systems and protocols along with a corporate infrastructure that has helped scale its expansion outside of Bangkok and consolidated its position further as one of the market leaders in Thailand, according to Oracare.
Dr Charlston will remain CEO of UDC and will work closely with Oracare to execute plans to expand the footprint of UDC in the Philippines. Besides geographical expansion, the group will also look at continuous investment in staff training, technology and patient care, ensuring that high clinical standards are maintained across all clinics.
“This marks the beginning of Oracare’s next phase of growth as we leverage our market leadership to generate more value to our patients and network partners whilst continuing to provide quality dental services. We are also looking to streamline more of our processes to create more value for our customers as we derive more synergies, economies of scale and cost efficiencies from our operating markets across Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines,” said Luai.
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