Louisville-based Kare Mobile Inc., fresh off winning a 2020 Vogt Award, is looking to scale up through a $1 million seed funding round.
Company founder and CEO Kwane Watson said in an interview that the scale up effort was boosted by the $25,000 non-dilutive funds from the Vogt Awards, but that the organizations will be able to grow faster with additional capital.
“We are actively searching for people that understand our business, understand or see the vision — how this will be more impactful in the future — and will also like to enter into our seed round investment,” Watson said. “We're just now really venturing into the angel investing and VC world.”
Kare Mobile has developed several products and a consulting service around its mobile dental units which are vans that are outfitted with a dental chair and other equipment. The vans allow dentists to take dental care to their patients.
The foundational product are the dental vans and the logistics/scheduling software to manage them. So far, Kare Mobile’s business has centered on providing dental care to patients in the region. But Watson said that the company will eventually shift to largely providing a “white label” dental vans and consulting services to other dentists that want to do what Kare Mobile has done.
Coming into the year, the company was focused on refining the mobile dental care model and launching itself as a player on the national stage. In March, just before the U.S. outbreak of the coronavirus, Watson was a keynote speaker at the National Mobile and Teledentistry Conference in Orlando. After that and after the outbreak of the coronavirus prompted several states to shut down all but emergency dentistry, Watson was invited to several dental-niche podcasts to describe his mobile dentistry model.
“I started getting quite a few leads and other people that wanted to mimic what we're doing here,” Watson said.
As the government reactions to coronavirus shutdown dentist offices, more providers nationally started looking for a way to reduce overhead and provide care through a different business model that operates in a lower cost setting that provides a safer way to get dental care, Watson said.
“Covid has been somewhat positive for us from that standpoint,” Watson said, referring to dentists being more open to the Kare Mobile approach where they may not have been before.
Referring to the Vogt Awards, Watson said, “That was huge because it's just more validation of not only our business, but our innovations along with the van…”
The company has also developed a radiation-resistant personal protective equipment jacket called S.A.M. that was designed by Kare Mobile for providers working in the vans. The company has partnered with Georgia-based Twice As Nice Uniforms to produce the jackets. The jackets allow providers to give x-rays without wearing a lead apron.
The company has sold about 35 jackets and has recently sold three vans. The demand for Kare Mobile’s service in the area has increased recently as well. The company is booked out until mid-October, rather than being booked out a few weeks, Watson said.
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