On 12th May 2021, Southern-Europe based a direct-to-consumer orthodontics platform, Impress, raised USD 50 Million in Series A funding round. This funding was led by CareCapital (a dental division of Hillhouse Capital in Asia), with the participation of TA Ventures, Bynd VC, UNIQA Ventures and investors like Valentin Pitarque, Peter Schiff, Michael Linse, Elliot Dornbusch and others.
Impress’s business model is all about offering high-quality treatment to the customers directly by establishing their own chain of the orthodontic clinic. These clinics will be emphasized on the modern patient experience and design.
About the Investors –
Care capital is a Venture capital firm focused on life science. This firm invests in companies that are innovating and developing pharmaceutical assets. It was founded on May 24, 2000, by David R. Ramsay, John Parker, and Jan Leschly in New Jersey, North-eastern US.
Services for both Private and Public opportunities in the US and Europe are provided by the company. It manages a capital amount of nearly USD 500 Million.
The company has invested in 33 rounds, of which 7 of them are Lead investments, 3 are diversity investments and 13 exits.
Words from the investors –
“Impress’s customer-centric focus, as well as its demonstrated ability to blitz scale, attracted us to the business. Vladimir and his team leverage technology to create a seamless customer journey for invisible orthodontics and optimise their cost structure in a unique way using the software.” – Andreas Nemeth, Managing partner, UNIQA Ventures.
About the company –
Impress was founded by Dr Khaled Kasem who is an orthodontist and serial entrepreneur Vladmir and Diliara Lupenko in Barcelona in 2019. The idea behind their startup was to “combine the best orthodontic tradition with the most innovative technology in the sector.”
Impress now has nearly 75 clinics in Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, and now they are planning to extend their chain across Europe. The company has an approximately annual run rate of USD 60 Million, and it is assumed to grow to a revenue of USD 160 Million in the next 12 months.
“We didn’t copy what other companies in the space were doing and approached the market from a different angle from the get-go. We doubled down on the doctor-led digital model, which brought us way better conversion rates and treatment quality even though on paper it looked complex in the beginning. It’s still very complex but we were able to crack it and scale exponentially.” – Diliara Lupenko, Co-founder, Impress.
