The investment round is led by CareCapital (One of the world’s largest dental foucussed PE firms) along with Nickleby capital, UNIQA Ventures, and a group of veteran investors. All existing shareholders such as TA Ventures and Bynd VC have also participated.
The funding will be put towards further international expansion across Europe and also where Impress already has a presence: Spain, Italy, Portugal, UK, and France. The investment will further accelerate the digitalization of the orthodontic experience, with the ultimate goal of creating the full-fledged doctor-led platform to constantly deliver a top-notch treatment quality and customer satisfaction.
“Impress's customer-centric focus as well as its demonstrated ability to blitzscale attracted us to the business. Vladimir and his team leverage technology to create a seamless customer journey for invisible orthodontics and optimized their cost structure in a unique way using software to automate key parts of the value chain. This combination is powerful, enabling Impress to find the right customers and offer them a better experience, at a much lower price. We are therefore delighted and proud to pursue the path towards an ecosystem around dental care together", said Andreas Nemeth, Managing Partner of UNIQA Ventures GmbH.
Impress has reinvented the new generation of orthodontic chains model by offering first-in-class medical treatments directly to consumers. Before Impress, consumers could only access cosmetic teeth alignment treatments or expensive orthodontic medical treatments in conventional clinics. Impress is leading in this new space by offering medically complex treatments at affordable prices to patients and by digitalizing the whole process.
The company was founded in 2019 in Barcelona by renowned orthodontist Dr. Khaled Kasem and serial entrepreneurs Diliara and Vladimir Lupenko, with the idea of combining the best of orthodontic tradition with the most innovative technology in the sector. From the very beginning the vision of the Impress founders was to introduce a different business model with a strong focus on medical experience and digitalization. The company is transforming the oral healthcare industry by developing its own chain of orthodontic clinics, which are characterized by their disruptive design and modern patient experience. The founders decided to build a medical company with the personal touch of in-house orthodontists, face-to-face care, and unique clinical expertise, where the proper implementation of business processes and digitalization are at the core.
The company's passion lies not only with quality of treatments but also with first-class customer experience. Its first flagship clinic operations, opened in Barcelona, was recognized as Healthcare Center of the Year 2020 by Frame Awards, and each flagship clinic built ever since is a piece of art and thoughtful design, rather than a place where patients would fear the dentist.
Diliara also comments: “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. Its still very complex but we were able to crack it and scale exponentially”
Since launch, the company has grown exponentially. In under 2 years Impress became the leading European orthodontic player and scaled to 75 clinics in Spain, Italy, UK, France and Portugal and has been recognized by Sifted as one of the fastest growing health-tech companies in Europe in 2020.