This dentist built a S$500M dental empire from one clinic. Now, Q&M is betting S$146M on Asia.

Q&M Dental Group is eyeing 300 clinics with a S$146M expansion plan

If you’ve walked around Singapore long enough, you’ve probably seen one: a neighbourhood dental clinic with bright green lettering and a giant tooth logo.

Chances are, you never thought much about it. But behind those familiar storefronts sits a SGX-listed company worth over S$500 million, operating 110 clinics across Singapore and now pursuing acquisitions in Australia, Thailand, China, and even of another local rival.

That company is Q&M Dental Group—and after nearly three decades of quietly dominating Singapore’s heartlands, it’s now betting big on becoming a regional dental giant.

Built for the heartlands

Q&M was established at Bukit Batok in Nov 1996 by Dr Ng Chin Siau, an NUS dental surgery graduate who had worked as a Dental Officer with the Ministry of Health before joining a private clinic at Bukit Batok—and eventually buying it over after selling his three-room Clementi flat for S$180,000. 

From the outset, Dr Ng had little interest in building a premium dental brand. Instead, he focused on something far more scalable: providing affordable dental care to everyday Singaporeans.

That philosophy was even reflected in the company’s original Chinese name, “全民” (Quan Min), meaning “for all the people.”

Demand grew quickly and outpaced what one dentist could handle.

By 1998, fellow dentist Dr Ng Jet Wei had joined the practice. A year later, together with Dr Chong Kai Guan, the trio had opened another four clinics. By 2000, Q&M was already operating 10 clinics with 20 dentists.

Rather than chasing prime shopping malls or affluent districts, Q&M planted its clinics where Singaporeans actually lived—in HDB estates, neighbourhood centres, and suburban malls.

The strategy was simple: keep prices accessible, expand steadily, and acquire smaller dental practices whose dentists and patient bases came as part of the deal.

Along the way, Q&M also built supporting businesses, including its own dental laboratory to produce crowns, bridges, and dentures in-house, giving it greater control over costs and operations.

By the time the company listed on the SGX Mainboard in 2009, it already had a proven expansion playbook. The IPO simply gave it the capital to execute it at a much larger scale.

Building the Q&M empire

In the years that followed the IPO, Q&M expanded aggressively through acquisitions, and revenue climbed from roughly S$60 million to S$155 million by 2016. 

By then, its outlet count had grown to 76 clinics across Asia—a number that would nearly double over the following decade.

This brought Q&M Dental Group’s market capitalisation to S$557.6 million that year.

Q&M’s growth has not been limited to opening more outlets. Alongside the clinic network, the group has built a set of adjacent capabilities that reinforce the core business.

In 2019, it launched the Q&M College of Dentistry at City Square Mall—Singapore’s first private postgraduate diploma programme in clinical dentistry, designed to train general dentists with an expanded range of advanced skills. The college earned a full four-year EduTrust certification from Feb 2026, allowing it to enrol international students. 

This is a crucial move with Singapore’s dentist supply constraint. Singapore’s only domestic dental school graduates around 50 to 60 dentists per year, and foreign-trained dentists must pass a rigorous licensing exam before practising. Any competitor trying to build a rival chain faces the same thin talent pool. 

Q&M’s training college gives it a head start in sourcing and retaining the practitioners it needs to keep opening clinics, a structural advantage that competitors cannot easily replicate.

When COVID-19 hit, Q&M pivoted part of its operations, acquiring Acumen Diagnostics to distribute test kits and run laboratory PCR testing in 2021—a business that briefly became a significant revenue contributor before demand evaporated as the pandemic receded.

As pandemic revenues evaporated, results retreated sharply in 2022 and 2023. But the core dental business proved its resilience: core healthcare EBITDA held steady at around S$37 to S$40 million throughout, even as the group-level numbers were distorted. By FY2025, the group had returned to profit, recording a16% growth.

In 2023, it opened a Free Dental Clinic at Chai Chee Road, offering essential dental treatment at no cost to underprivileged patients. While charitable in nature, the initiative also reinforces Q&M’s standing in the communities where its business is most deeply rooted.

More recently, Q&M has turned its attention to technology.

In 2024, the group invested in EM2AI, a dental technology firm developing AI-powered diagnostic and treatment-planning tools, including a cloud-based practice management system called EM2Clinic.

The tools are designed to reduce the administrative burden on dentists and standardise clinical workflows, which is useful as Q&M grows toward a network where consistency across hundreds of clinics matters more than before.

Why scale matters

With 110 clinics, Q&M operates roughly 8% of Singapore’s nearly 1,300 licensed dental clinics. According to the company, it also serves around one-third of all patients who visit private dental groups.

That scale creates advantages that go beyond simply having more outlets.

As Singapore’s largest private dental chain, Q&M has greater bargaining power with landlords and suppliers, while its size also allows it to spread fixed costs across a much larger network.

Government healthcare policies could further strengthen that position.

The enhanced Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) subsidies introduced in Oct 2025 expanded coverage for restorative dental procedures and extended eligibility to 1.7 million cardholders. As the country’s largest CHAS-accredited private dental chain, Q&M stands to benefit more than smaller competitors. Analysts estimated the changes lifted the group’s revenue by around 3% in the second half of FY2025.

More support is also on the way. From mid-2026, seniors will be able to use up to S$400 a year from Flexi-MediSave for dental treatment at CHAS clinics. The policy aligns neatly with Singapore’s ageing population, with one in four residents expected to be aged 65 or older by 2030. As dental needs typically increase with age—and many seniors live in the heartland estates where Q&M has built its network—the demographic trend could provide another long-term tailwind for the group.

Meanwhile, Q&M continues to consolidate its position. In Mar, the group announced plans to fully acquire an unnamed Singapore dental chain, backed by a profit guarantee of up to S$34 million over five years. The deal would further strengthen its presence in its home market even as it looks overseas for growth.

Now betting big on the region

For most of its history, Q&M’s overseas ambitions effectively stopped at the Causeway.

Over the years, the group steadily expanded its presence in Malaysia, where it now operates 38 dental clinics alongside a dental supplies and equipment distribution business. Beyond that, however, its growth remained largely concentrated in Singapore.

That is now changing.

In recent months, Q&M has unveiled plans to enter three markets almost simultaneously, marking the group’s most ambitious expansion programme to date

The biggest move is Australia. In Jul 2026, Q&M signed binding agreements to acquire Experteeth Group for A$119.64 million (S$107.83 million). The deal would add 40 clinics and around 120 dentists across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory, making it Q&M’s largest acquisition ever and its first entry into a market outside Asia.

In Thailand, it signed a deal to acquire a group of 30-plus clinics focused on cosmetic and aesthetic dentistry, a sector closely tied to the country’s medical tourism industry. 

In total, the acquisitions in both countries will amount to a combined US$113.2 million (S$146.26 million) investment to build a pan-Asian dental company. 

China forms the third pillar of Q&M’s expansion strategy. The group also owns Chinese dental operator Aoxin Q&M, which it has now fully consolidated as a subsidiary. It plans to use the business as a platform to acquire dental chains in southern China, expanding beyond Aoxin’s traditional base in the country’s northeast.

If all three acquisitions close, Q&M’s footprint could grow from over 160 dental outlets today to more than 300 within two years.

Not every growth initiative, however, has gone according to plan.

In Apr 2025, the group also proposed a secondary listing on Bursa Malaysia, which would have given Malaysian investors direct access to the stock and strengthened Q&M’s capital markets presence in its second-largest operating market. The plan was later shelved, with the company citing prevailing market conditions.

What could go wrong?

Three concurrent acquisitions in markets Q&M has limited or no experience operating in are an ambitious programme for a management team whose track record has been built almost entirely in Singapore and Malaysia. 

China is the cautionary tale here. Q&M first entered China back in 2013, and later spun that business off as a separately listed company, Aoxin Q&M, in 2017. Aoxin broke even for its first couple of years, then racked up losses for several years running—around RMB142 million (S$27.09 million) in total losses from 2020 to 2024—as it battled COVID-19 shutdowns and China’s strict lockdown policies.

It only turned a profit again in 2025, roughly six years after the losses began.

Now Q&M has folded Aoxin fully into its own accounts, and in doing so has added S$77.0 million of goodwill to its balance sheet—essentially the premium it’s paying on the bet that these businesses will earn enough in future to justify the price.

If they don’t, that goodwill may eventually need to be written down, hitting profits the same way it did for Aoxin’s own past investments. Australia and Thailand are brand-new markets for Q&M with no comparable track record to lean on, so if that expansion underperforms, the money put into it may not pay off.

Dental practices are also relationship-driven businesses, where patients follow their dentist, not the brand. When a chain acquires a clinic, the real asset is the practitioners inside it. 

If key dentists leave post-acquisition and take their patient books with them, the acquired revenue can evaporate quickly. 

Q&M has tried to address this through 15-year service agreements and long lock-up equity arrangements with acquired dentists, but such structures have never been tested at the scale Q&M is now attempting across four markets simultaneously.

Then there is the Johor-Singapore dynamic complicating profits further. The Rapid Transit System Link scheduled to open in Dec 2026, will cut the Woodlands North to Bukit Chagar crossing to around five minutes—at a fare of roughly S$5 to S$7.

Singaporeans already save 50 to 65% on identical dental procedures by crossing the Causeway, with more than 100,000 estimated to make the trip annually. A single dental implant costs S$4,500 to S$6,500 in Singapore versus S$1,200 to S$2,000 in Johor Bahru. 

When the RTS removes the main friction, being the border queue, from that equation, the maths for price-sensitive patients shifts meaningfully. 

Q&M’s 38 Malaysian clinics, including in Johor, might mean some of that outflow stays within the group. But how much of Q&M’s dental revenue holds up once the crossing becomes as easy as taking the MRT is a question nobody can fully answer yet.

From a single clinic in Bukit Batok to a listed group eyeing four countries simultaneously, Q&M’s story is, in many ways, a study in patience. Three decades of unglamorous, heartland dentistry have built toward a moment where the company is finally ready to bet big on becoming Singapore’s dominant private dental chain in the region. Whether the bet pays off will be the next chapter.

• Learn more about Q&M Dental Group here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

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Featured Image Credit: National University of Singapore, Velocity @ Novena Square