Startup leverages AI workflow optimization to transform the industry's procurement process
SAN FRANCISCO -- Today, Wellplaece founders announced the company's Private Beta launch in addition to a $5.5M seed round which includes funding from a pre-seed round. The funding was led by Eniac Ventures and Bee Partners, along with participation from Erik Anderson, Co-founder CEO WestRiver Group; Haroon Mokhtarzada, CEO & Co-founder of TrueBill and RocketMoney; Andy Oreffice, former CCO of Affordable Healthcare; and entrepreneur Francis Hellyer. Wellplaece is the first and only platform for dental offices to source the right products at the best prices. Co-founded by Caen Contee, serial entrepreneur and founding team member of global micromobility startup Lime; and CTO, lead software engineer Ivan Bertona, Wellplaece has already achieved significant growth, proven consistent customer savings, and is scaling up to meet industry demand with the launch of their automated, multi-vendor supply product purchasing platform.
Currently, ordering supplies, and any kind of comparison shopping for the best dental products is a fragmented process. It is time-consuming, costly and prone to human error. Based on Wellplaece's internal research, dental practice offices rely on at least three and up to seven different suppliers on average. Wellplaece ultimately empowers dental offices to spend their time more efficiently. Wellplaece also provides data to power interoffice optimization, decision making, and business intelligence, particularly valuable toward the management of group practices.
"I am constantly working to save, in order to take the pressure off of our top line, so we can focus on quality of care," said Dr. Armand Begian of SugarBug Dental. "I value the relationships I have with my traditional suppliers, and I thought I had negotiated good prices. I can't believe the savings Wellplaece has been able to optimize on our behalf."
Unlike other companies in the dental marketplace space, Wellplaece's performance-based business model leverages built-in AI to deliver newfound savings to its clients, Dental Support Organizations (DSOs) and dental practices everywhere at no cost to them. The company leverages aggregated customer volume to get their practices market-competitive pricing, and customer-specific settings to enable practice or group specific purchasing behaviors across a large network of suppliers. Clients are only billed after their orders are successfully processed, placed, and confirmed delivered.
Wellplaece's proprietary technology shops an ever expanding network of suppliers on the client's behalf, resulting in more streamlined access to the right products for a better price. Wellplaece places the order and manages supplier logistics while only charging the client once for the aggregated cart of supplies. In addition, Wellplaece even manages returns and chargebacks when necessary.
"By utilizing our AI-empowered tech to do the shopping across a much expanded supply network, we help dental practices make more informed, consolidated, and informed decisions on the procurement process," said Wellplaece Co-founder Caen Contee. "As the dental industry and private group practices evolve into this new decade, it's becoming clear that it's just as important and impactful to save on the bottom line and make your practice more operationally efficient as much as it is to focus on topline growth- upselling patients, treatments, and maximizing patient throughput."
Already, Wellplaece has saved its first cohort of dental practices 20% to 40% savings per order. Additionally, by the end of Q2, Wellplaece will have doubled its distributor and manufacturer supplier network, and is on track to onboard 100+ new locations over the coming quarters.