Arrail Dental, a high-end dental service provider in China, plans to expand its medical institutions in China from the current 16 to 50 in the next five years, Founder and CEO Robert Zou said April 7.
The new clinics and dental hospitals will still mainly reside in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, where the company gathers its target customers, high-end crowds, Zou said.
The company may also try to bring its dental service to other cities in China. The newly opened clinic in Xiamen, a city in South China's Fujian province, is the newest location, he added.
Arrail was very cautious while setting up clinics, Zou told the reporters. He said, in the past 10 years Arrail set up about 10 institutions, because dental service is very different from other industries.
Last year, the State Council, China's cabinet, encouraged greater private and foreign capital involvement in the nation's hospitals and clinics as part of a health system reform program. Zou said that would promote the development of China's health sector, including dental service.
He said the 12th Five Year Plan (2011-15) also emphasized the importance of expanding domestic demand, in which China's health sector would play a leading role.
Last year, his company attracted $20 million of venture capital from KPCB China and the QIMING venture to catalyze its development.
With government support and sufficient funding, as well as a growing need for dental services among Chinese customers, the main challenge for Arrail is building up a professional team of qualified dentists and nurses to meet the needs of its rapid expansion in the next five years, Zou said.
As early as about five or six years ago, Zou said the company began to invest huge financial and material resources in building a qualified medical team. Since that time, the company launched campus recruitment and began to form a training system to build its own medical team.
Arrail opened its first dental clinic in Beijing in 1999. It now has 16 dental medical institutions in China, which have been selected by many embassies, transnational corporations, banks and insurance companies as the preferred dental medical service provider.
