Our featured entrepreneur this week is Dr. Dhru Shah, the Founder and CEO of Dentinal Tubules Limited (“Tubules”)
Dhru trained and qualified as a periodontist, but he always knew that he had a greater vision: bringing education to the world. It was a vision that started when he was growing up in Kenya and he saw that not all of the children had access to the same level of education as he had.
After finishing his schooling, Dhru came to the UK to study dentistry. During his studies, his family ran out of money and he was faced with a stark choice: support yourself somehow, or go back to Kenya.
“I had to continue my studies. There was no choice – not just for me, but also because of all those children who didn’t have this opportunity. I couldn’t let them down by dropping out and going back home,” Dhru told us. “So I took on a couple of part time jobs and kept up my studies. It was hard. I didn’t eat much and I barely slept, but I was doing this for something that was so much bigger than just me, and that kept me going.”
Dhru completed his MClin Dent in Periodontology and worked in practice, but he knew he had a higher calling. In 2009, he launched Tubules, initially as a web portal for all things dentistry, and over the next few years it evolved into something much bigger: a video library for dentists to comply with their Continuing Professional Development requirements, and more importantly it evolved into a community of like-minded professionals who have become known as “Tubulites”.
Dhru met David at a business pitching competition in early 2016* and they really hit it off. Since then, Add then Multiply has worked with Dhru to put together a solid business plan, raise £500,000 in equity capital and bring in a small team of people to scale the business.
“I’ve never shied away from hard work and am happy to put in the long hours,” said Dhru. “But as a solo entrepreneur there’s only so much that you can achieve. Having a team of people that I can call upon has been transformational. Sometimes it’s hard to let go, because everything that Tubules was came from my creation. Once I realised that my job was to be the leader rather than the doer, everything changed.”
Over the past year, Tubules has run live courses with world-class dental educators, expanded its operations into India, hosted the inaugural Tubules Congress that was attended by over 200 dental professionals, and most important of all, established the Tubules Foundation.
In an emotionally charged address to the Tubules Congress last October, Dhru announced that the company would be contributing 3% of gross revenues to the Tubules Foundation, a charity whose purpose is his vision: bringing education to the world.
“It’s taken longer than we thought it would, but the Charities Commission has now approved our status as a charitable foundation, and we’re in process of setting up bank accounts and getting registered with the tax authorities. We already have our eyes on our first project: to complete the building of a school in rural Kenya that is only half-built because the donor ran out of money,” Dhru told us. “It’s incredibly rewarding to see the response we’ve had though. Not just from the company contributions, but we’ve had pledges from our Study Club Directors to raise money for the Foundation, and several of our top global speakers have agreed to pledge half of their honoraria from speaking at Tubules gigs to the Foundation. It’s a humbling experience.”
Working with visionary entrepreneurs like Dhru, giving them the tools and resources to achieve their dreams, and seeing them grow and develop as leaders is what we love doing at Add then Multiply.
* For full disclosure, we would like to inform our readers that David is a Director, CFO and the third largest shareholder of Dentinal Tubules Limited.
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