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India’s MakeO has raised US$10 million in a round led by Singularity AMC, with unnamed funds and family offices also participating, eight months after the Mumbai-headquartered dental aligner company agreed to absorb Singapore’s Zenyum.

The cheque, disclosed in a statement on October 13, is modest by the standards of the clear aligner category’s go-go years. But it lands on a business that now claims something few consumer healthtech companies in the region can: more than SGD70 million (US$54.7 million) in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and sustained profitability on an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) basis.

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The money has three jobs. It will fund Zenyum’s dentist network expansion across Southeast and North Asia, strengthen the group’s technology, and expand manufacturing capacity. Zenyum also said it continues to evaluate acquisitions across India and other parts of Asia, a signal that the shopping basket is not yet full.

The combined group says it works with roughly 1,100 partner dentists across India, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan.

The deal behind the round

That dentist figure is, for now, largely the arithmetic of a merger rather than fresh growth. When the two firms announced their tie-up, Toothsi had about 500 partner doctors and more than 50 dental centres in India, while Zenyum had 600 doctor partners.

MakeO agreed to acquire Zenyum in February. Zenyum’s own framing at the time was more diplomatic, describing it as a “merger of equals” because both businesses had similar top lines and complementary geographies. Financial terms were never disclosed, and Zenyum CEO Julian Artopé declined to comment on valuation or the post-merger shareholding split.

The structure tells its own story. MakeO co-founder Arpi Mehta remains group CEO and Artopé continues to run Zenyum, with Mumbai as the group headquarters and Singapore retaining control of Southeast and North Asia operations. Crucially, Toothsi’s vertically integrated, US FDA-certified aligner platform now designs, manufactures and exports aligners for the whole business across Asia. Put simply: India is the factory, Singapore is the shopfront.

For Zenyum, it marks a notable turn. Founded in 2018 by Artopé and Frederik Krass, the startup raised a US$13.6 million Series A in 2019 and followed it with a US$40 million Series B led by L Catterton in 2021, backed by Sequoia Capital India (now Peak XV), RTP Global, Partech and others. Back then, Artopé was on a mission to help Asia smile more and Zenyum reported a fourfold revenue jump in 2020.

Five years later, a Series B-stage Singapore brand folding into an Indian peer is another data point for a regional exit market that increasingly favours trade sales over IPOs.

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MakeO, for its part, has been on the acquisition trail. The Zenyum deal was its second acquisition in six months, and the company had earlier merged its Toothsi and Skinnsi brands under the MakeO umbrella in 2022. It raised a US$16 million bridge round in 2024 backed by Ashish Kacholia and 360 One Asset.

Reading the fine print

The headline numbers deserve a closer look. ARR is a natural metric for software subscriptions, but aligner treatment is largely a one-off purchase, topped up with consumables such as toothbrushes and retainers. The group did not explain how it calculates the figure, whether it is an annualised run rate, or how much comes from repeat customers.

The profitability claim also comes with an asterisk. EBITDA strips out depreciation and amortisation, which are precisely the costs that matter for a company expanding manufacturing capacity and carrying acquisition-related intangibles on its books. Being EBITDA-positive is a real achievement in a sector that has burned cash freely, as Carsome’s run of profitable quarters in used cars has shown is possible elsewhere. But it is not the same as net profit.

Then there is the size of the round. At under a fifth of the stated ARR, US$10 million looks like targeted growth capital rather than a war chest, which makes the continued talk of acquisitions intriguing. Either deals will be small, or more capital will follow. The valuation, and the identity of the participating family offices, remain undisclosed.

A crowded mouth

The rival landscape is formidable. Align Technology’s Invisalign remains the global category leader and sells through orthodontists and dentists across Asia. Swiss implant giant Straumann pushes its ClearCorrect brand, while China’s Angelalign has scaled aggressively in its home market and beyond.

The cautionary tale is SmileDirectClub, the US direct-to-consumer pioneer that collapsed into bankruptcy and shut down in late 2023, partly because cutting dentists out of the loop invited regulatory and clinical pushback. Zenyum and Toothsi have both leaned the other way, routing patients through in-person dentist consultations, which is why the partner network figure sits at the centre of this announcement.

The wider funding climate adds pressure. Southeast Asian healthtech endured a funding drought in 2024, and the investors still writing cheques increasingly want businesses built around healthcare workflows rather than flashy apps. Consolidation is picking up too, with Zeya Health acquiring ConnectLah to build booking rails for clinics.

What comes next

The clearest clue lies in what MakeO said in February. It flagged selective M&A and partnerships with local dental chains and clinical practices in markets including India, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

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That would mark a strategic shift. Owning clinics, rather than partnering with them, turns an asset-light network into an asset-heavy one, with more control over patient experience but more capital locked in bricks, chairs and staff. It would also put the group in direct competition with some of the very dentists it relies on for referrals.

For now, MakeO has a profitable (on its own definition) pan-Asian platform, an Indian manufacturing base and fresh capital. Whether investors keep smiling will depend on how much of that S$70 million turns into cash that stays.

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