A. Velumani, the person who constructed Thyrocare into considered one of India’s best diagnostic chains and exited at near a billion-dollar valuation, is again in builder mode. Not in diagnostics, however in dentistry. And never as a passive investor, however as an working mentor with a stopwatch in hand and a disruption thesis in his pocket.
For the startup world, Velumani has currently develop into one thing of a people hero—the scientist-turned-entrepreneur scaled with frugality, exited at scale, and now dispenses powerful like to founders chasing development with out income. At founder occasions, product launches, and tv studios, he attracts crowds that deal with him much less like an investor and extra like a enterprise thinker.
However together with his newest enterprise—a nationwide dental platform being constructed beneath the AVM Smiles banner—Velumani is placing his personal concepts again on trial. AVM Smiles is greater than a facet mission, with the mentor as soon as once more changing into the operator. It’s a stay experiment, a take a look at of whether or not his core doctrine can nonetheless produce breakout scale in a extra crowded period.
A special taking part in discipline
Velumani’s new initiative may be very not like his unique diagnostic enterprise. When he began Thyrocare, there weren’t many labs with scale and having a diagnostic chain wasn’t even an concept within the Indian market. Dental chains, nonetheless, are a pretty big enterprise at the moment, and to that extent, he’s making an attempt to get right into a market that isn’t nascent anymore.
“Healthcare companies have come a good distance since Thyrocare began. So, will probably be powerful to emulate the identical success that Velumani had in promoting his first enterprise,” G.S.Ok. Velu, founder and chairman of Neuberg Diagnostics, noticed.
The panorama Velumani is coming into is crowded with established names, refined playbooks, and battle-tested opponents—a far cry from the blue ocean he as soon as navigated.
Velumani is coming into a crowded discipline of established gamers and battle-tested opponents—a far cry from the blue ocean he as soon as navigated.
The afterlife of an exit
Velumani’s journey as a biochemistry PhD who constructed Thyrocare by focusing narrowly on thyroid testing, slashing costs, constructing a B2B (enterprise to enterprise) mannequin, and scaling via franchise assortment centres reasonably than costly company-owned networks is nicely documented. His method was radical for its time: simplify, specialise, scale. “What’s simplified is known. What’s simplified is offered. All challenges in enterprise are due to issues,” he advised Mint.
Velumani insists his entry into entrepreneurship was not born out of a grand design however from constraint. He targeted solely on thyroid as a result of that was his tutorial power. He priced low as a result of he didn’t absolutely know value excessive. He constructed franchise channels as a result of chasing funds himself was inefficient. What later appeared like technique was really survival. “All that I did was completely unconventional… I didn’t have an possibility,” he recalled.
When Velumani offered Thyrocare at a valuation that brushed a billion {dollars}, it appeared like a wonderfully timed exit. Within the years since, nonetheless, listed diagnostics friends comparable to Dr Lal PathLabs, Metropolis and Vijaya Diagnostic have achieved larger market capitalisations. Some observers argue that Velumani could have offered early.
He has responded candidly in conversations: the valuation was enticing, and personally he was coming into a unique life part after his spouse’s passing in 2016. Velumani thought he was achieved operating corporations. He wasn’t.
What adopted was an sudden second profession—as investor, mentor, and more and more, as a public voice for capital self-discipline in a startup ecosystem hooked on burn.
Stealing the highlight
At a current electrical scooter unveiling in Bengaluru by startup Easy Power, one thing uncommon occurred. The scooters had been glossy, the tech specs spectacular, however reasonably than have a look at the electrical automobiles (EVs), many within the crowd gravitated towards one early investor. Velumani discovered himself surrounded by founders and younger operators searching for 5 minutes of blunt suggestions. The {hardware} might wait; the exhausting truths couldn’t.
View Full Picture
His recommendation to the founders of the EV firm was characteristically unsentimental: don’t cling to fairness if capital is required to outlive and scale. “Increase funds, even if you happen to lose your fairness. Getting funds is a should. As a result of you’ll be able to’t develop your organization and defend your private egocentric pursuits on the identical time,” he mentioned.
Velumani attracts sharp distinctions between what he calls pull merchandise and push merchandise—merchandise clients actively need versus people who require heavy advertising spend to maneuver. “If the client pulls it, you don’t have a buyer acquisition value. If he has no want, you must push it. Why do you amplify losses? Folks assume loss-making will develop into profit-making as soon as scale comes. No—you might die if scale comes with out revenue.”
That readability has made him a pure match for tv. On Star India’s entrepreneur actuality present Bharat ke Tremendous Founders, hosted by actor Suneil Shetty, Velumani sits amongst a pool of traders who’ve dedicated ₹100 crore to again rising companies. Contestants pitch; traders commit; Velumani diagnoses.
The entrepreneur says he finds himself repeating three phrases so typically that co-judges tease him about it: Overview. Reset. Restart. “You could have priced it an excessive amount of—assessment. You haven’t packaged it appropriately—reset. You could have 200 SKUs however revenue comes from 10—restart,” he mentioned.
Velumani has additionally stunned fellow traders by sometimes backing founders with out taking fairness—if the concept aligns together with his broader mission of bettering effectivity and affordability. His acknowledged ambition is now not simply to construct corporations, however to construct entrepreneurs. “Me changing into profitable is just not the purpose. It’s management that has impacted or disrupted inefficiencies,” he mentioned.
But whilst his mentor persona grows, Velumani has been quietly making ready for a return to hands-on scaling.
Dental disruption wager
Velumani’s present obsession is dentistry—particularly, a Mumbai-headquartered chain known as Orthosquare, which is being rebranded and expanded beneath a brand new nationwide platform known as AVM Smiles. The founders, Kunal Shet and Riddhi Rathi Shet, constructed over 100 clinics via a largely company-owned mannequin. Velumani desires to vary the engine mid-flight.
View Full Picture
“Firm owned, firm operated (COCO) is just not scalable. Franchise owned, franchise operated is scalable,” he mentioned.
The association itself is uncommon. Velumani is just not placing any capital into the chain. As an alternative, he earns a 4% share of the topline income as a mentoring and model charge. He supplied debt assist if required; the founders declined, saying the enterprise generates sufficient money. His contribution is the working system: value self-discipline, procurement scale, pricing technique, franchise structure, and model belief.
“This enterprise doesn’t want cash. It’s model administration, software program administration, transparency,” he mentioned.
The targets are daring: 1,000 retailers by 2030, and a headline-grabbing plan to open 100 clinics in a single day. Velumani is already deeply concerned, flying in recurrently to assessment rollout plans and franchise buildings.
Shet describes Velumani much less as an investor and extra as a mindset shock. “He has utterly modified the mannequin. In a COCO mannequin you’re very controlling. Franchising is sort of a rented particular person in your model—your mindset has to first change,” he mentioned.
Velumani’s thesis is that dentistry at the moment resembles diagnostics of the Nineties: fragmented, underutilised, and overpriced as a result of low throughput and ego-driven infrastructure duplication. “In a dental clinic, the chair is empty for 21 hours, busy for 3 hours. That’s inefficiency. Wherever there may be inefficiency, I see alternative,” he argued.
Velumani’s thesis is that dentistry at the moment mirrors Nineties diagnostics—fragmented, underutilised and overpriced as a result of low throughput and ego-driven duplication.
Dentistry is only one instance of what Velumani sees as a healthcare panorama riddled with inefficiencies ready to be addressed. He factors to billion-dollar alternatives inside healthcare in specialised areas that have to be disrupted, citing fields comparable to urology or gynaecology, which can not seem as apparent targets however nonetheless supply super potential in a rustic like India.
Velumani’s playbook is acquainted: drive utilisation, centralise buying, standardise processes, push costs down by 30–40%, and let franchisees earn sufficient to remain motivated. Shet says the chain is already targeted on higher-value procedures comparable to implants and aligners, and on backward integration in manufacturing—areas AVM Smiles will scale additional.
“Eighty p.c of the procedures give 20% of the cash. Twenty p.c of the procedures give 80% of the revenue. We give attention to that 20%,” Shet mentioned.
A harder area
Nonetheless, this isn’t the identical panorama Velumani disrupted three many years in the past. Organized dental chains exist already at scale. Massive ones comparable to Clove Dental, which has over 500 areas, and Sabka Dentist, with 200 retailers, have spent years refining processes, absorbing losses, and tightening operations. But regardless of being in enterprise for over 15 years, each have remained largely native companies confined to some states. Sabka Dentist, as an illustration, operates largely within the western markets after beginning out in Mumbai in 2010.
The franchise mannequin itself is extra contested and extra advanced at the moment than when Thyrocare started increasing.
Dr Ramani Ramamoorthy, a Chennai-based dentist with over 4 many years of expertise, has a phrase of warning: “The dental chain enterprise, as with every different enterprise, might be pushed by targets and income. Whereas there may be a number of effectivity that may be had by operating chains, dentistry remains to be an area enterprise that runs on belief. So, there are a number of transferring components earlier than a scaled enterprise can earn a living.”
But some business observers imagine the chance stays substantial, even when execution might be tougher. Mentioned Sujay Shetty, director at PwC: “If Velumani has a nationwide dental chain in thoughts, there’s a good alternative there. And likewise, there may be sufficient room for extra diagnostic providers—the market isn’t saturated but.”
If Velumani has a nationwide dental chain in thoughts, there’s a good alternative there.
—Sujay Shetty, director at PwC
Shet himself argues that it’s early days within the dentistry enterprise in India, pointing to a lack of information about general dental hygiene. He says there’s a enormous alternative within the enterprise that makes it an fascinating drawback to resolve.
Some healthcare entrepreneurs warning that what labored in a nascent diagnostics market could not translate cleanly to fashionable dentistry. Franchisees are extra subtle, competitors is tighter, and margins are extra seen.
Velumani acknowledges not directly that markets evolve—noting that after his exit, diagnostics corporations shortly raised costs as soon as the low-price strain he exerted disappeared. “All my opponents elevated charges… Now once more there may be sufficient room to disrupt—not as a result of I cost much less, however as a result of I construct environment friendly programs,” he reiterated.
Later this 12 months, Velumani’s non-compete interval in diagnostics ends. He has made it clear he intends to return, this time concentrating on segments of testing he believes stay inefficient and overpriced. “I’m ignoring that one-third of the menu I already disrupted. I’ll give attention to the two-thirds but to be disrupted,” he mentioned.
Within the startup circuit, Velumani is commonly handled like a completed case examine. On Saturdays, in suburban Mumbai dental places of work, he’s laying the bottom for a brand new one.
Key Takeaways
- After constructing and efficiently exiting diagnostics chain Thyrocare, A. Velumani has returned to lively entrepreneurship.
- This time, he has turned his consideration to disrupting India’s toothcare market.
- AVM Smiles, the dental platform Velumani is driving, goals to scale nationally.
- It could be via a franchise-led mannequin, specializing in standardisation, operational effectivity, and affordability to drive development.
- Business insiders and observers see each alternative and threat.
- They observe that whereas dentistry is fragmented and underpenetrated, it is usually trust-driven and operationally advanced to scale cross-country.
- Velumani has not invested any capital in AVM Smiles. As an alternative, he earns a 4% share of the chain’s topline income as a mentoring and model charge.