Milad Nourvand: We are addressing the challenge of finding dental health professionals, particularly for new immigrants and long-term residents in Canada

We are CareCanada, dedicated to helping patients find the right dental health professionals. Our mission is to simplify the process of locating high quality health services nearby.

Tell us about yourself?

I am a serial tech entrepreneur and have co-founded several successful tech startups in the past. When I first arrived in Canada, I struggled to find a dental professional who accepted my insurance and provided quality services. I soon discovered that many of my friends faced the same issue. This initial challenge prompted me to conduct further research in this area, revealing that finding the right dental professionals is a significant difficulty not only for new immigrants but also for long-term residents of Canada. Consequently, I discussed this issue with a friend who shared my passion, and we decided to leverage our technological expertise to solve this problem.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

One major issue we encountered initially was that we erroneously assumed the problems we observed in the dental professionals’ industry were completely similar to those in related fields like physiotherapy and chiropractic care. We ambitiously aimed to address all these areas from day one, which turned out to be a significant mistake. Rather than starting with a niche focus, we broadened our scope, and after about six months of intensive work, we realized the industry was more complex than we had initially thought. This realization led us to restructure our business to concentrate exclusively on dental health professionals, which was our original concept. Looking back, I would advise my past self to focus solely on dental professionals and not to squander limited resources pursuing other fields.

What problem does your business solve?

We are addressing the challenge of finding dental health professionals, particularly for new immigrants and long-term residents in Canada.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

CareCanada was inspired by my personal experience. As a new immigrant to Canada, I struggled to find the right dentist and was uncertain about insurance coverage. After weeks of research, I finally visited a dentist in Ontario, but was dissatisfied with the quality of work. Moreover, I was unexpectedly charged $120 for a service that was not billable to my insurance, without prior notice. When I shared my experiences with friends and community members, I discovered that many faced similar issues. Therefore, my co-founder and I decided to utilize our expertise to develop software that enables people to easily find suitable dentists.

What is your magic sauce?

Our secret sauce is our exceptional team. Our team members possess extensive backgrounds in the field and have either developed or contributed to the development of similar software in the past.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

Our vision is to become the go-to place for Canadians seeking any healthcare professionals (including dental health professionals) they need.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

Our biggest challenge was building trust and establishing partnerships with dentists. We chose to start on a small scale to create success stories, and then aimed to grow gradually.

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

We invite dentists and dental health professionals to join us in building this vision. You can follow us on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/carecanada/