Q&A: Dr Ng Chin Siau

A wealth of pioneering experience in the dental industry has empowered Dr Ng Chin Siau, the mastermind behind Q&M Dental Group’s meteoric rise, to expand his business horizons far beyond the realm of dentistry.

Today, his empire spans medical laboratories, the research industry, and the esteemed Q&M College of Dentistry. In this exclusive interview, Dr Ng unveils the secrets of his success, illuminates his unique perspective on business and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and reveals hard lessons from his overseas market expansion.

The Q&M dental brand is synonymous with Singapore’s competitive dental service market. Thanks to its 108 locations spread across the tiny island nation, the ubiquitous green-coloured Q&M logo pops up everywhere ­­– in shopping malls, MRT (metro train) stations, and housing estates, dotting the Singapore heartlands as you would expect from a postal office. The Q&M Dental Group additionally boasts 45 and 17 surgeries in Malaysia and China, respectively ­– employing an army of some 580 dentists across the local and overseas locations.

What began as a solo practice in 1996 has come a long way to become an unlikely household name, not to mention an SGX-listed dental behemoth with a market cap of S$309.08 million. To investigate the phenomenal success of Singapore’s – some say Southeast Asia’s – largest private dental health group, would be to unravel the mind of its Founder and CEO, Dr Ng Chin Siau.

Singapore’s Dental Trailblazer

Dr Ng has been a trailblazer in the dental industry for over two decades. A BDS graduate of the prestigious National University of Singapore, Dr Ng further honed his skills by obtaining a Certificate of Implantology from the University of Frankfurt in December 2003.

After working as a Dental Officer with the Ministry of Health between 1992 and 1994, Dr Ng left to join a private dental clinic at Bukit Batok as an Associate Dental Surgeon until October 1996. In November 1996, he founded the Q & M Dental Group and has been steering its growth and success ever since.

Dr Ng’s expertise in the dental industry is recognized not only in Singapore but also across the globe. He is a member of various economic and trade councils, including the Singapore-Liaoning and Singapore-Shangdong Economic and Trade Council, and Sichuan Singapore Business Council. He is also a Patron of the Ang Mo Kio-Hougang Citizen’s Consultative Committee and the Chairman of River Valley High School’s School Advisory Committee.

Awards and Accolades

The consummate dental entrepreneur’s dedication and hard work have been recognized with numerous awards and accolades.

He received the Best Entrepreneur Award in the discipline of Dentistry from the National University of Singapore’s Business Incubation of Global Organisations in September 2007. In September 2009, he was named the “Top Entrepreneur” and winner of “The Entrepreneur of the Year Award (EYA) for Enterprise” in the 2009 Rotary Club – ASME EYA. In December 2010, Dr Ng was conferred the “Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year 2010 Award (Healthcare Services)”. In 2015, he was named the “Best CEO of the Year for Companies with $300 million to $1 billion Market Capitalisation” at the Singapore Corporate Awards.

Dental Resource Asia: What is behind the ‘Q&M’ name?

Dr Ng Chin Siau: The name is actually derived from my lunar calendar birthday. The Feng Shui master advised me that since I was born on the 11th of November based on the lunar calendar timeline, the Chinese characters in the name of my practice should comprise of 11 strokes in total.

Hence if you add up the number of strokes in the Chinese characters ‘Quan Min’ (全民), where the letters Q&M come from, there are exactly 11 strokes in all.

It was actually quite challenging looking for Chinese characters that not only comprise a specific number of strokes but which also represent the company ethos and principles.

The words ‘Quan Min’ turned out to be precisely that. Loosely translated as “the whole people”, the words symbolise the community-driven ideals of being in service to “the people and the world”.

Another fun fact: I was told it would be difficult to register my company name in China because the two words were frequently co-opted by the Chinese government for naming public buildings and places. Some people had claimed that ‘Quan Min’ would not be issued for use by private institutions but, somehow, I managed to register the name successfully without any hiccups.

DRA: People familiar with Singapore’s dental scene know you as the Founder and CEO of Q&M, which is the country’s largest private dental health group. Yet from what I understand, you manage a bigger portfolio than that.

NCS: Yes, I have other business interests both within and beyond the domain of dentistry.

For example, our company’s joint venture with Dr Ong Siew Hwa’s Acumen Diagnostic Pte. Ltd, a company that was incorporated at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the establishment of Acumen, the group expanded into the medical laboratories and research industry, where we took on the sales and distribution of COVID-19 test kits and provision of laboratory testing.

Since 2019, we also started the Q&M College of Dentistry, which was incorporated and registered as a Private Education Institute. To date, it is the only College in Singapore founded in the private sector that is registered with the CPE (Committee for Private Education), under the purview of Singapore’s Ministry of Education.

That means we are the first licensed private dental university in Singapore. The College is able to grant Graduate Diploma certificates to course participants who are dentists with BDS and post BDS qualifications, after going through some training modules in selected dental disciplines. So this is one big milestone for us.

Besides these Singapore-based projects, my portfolio extends overseas. In fact, very soon after Q&M was successfully listed on the Singapore Exchange Mainboard back in 2009, we entered into the Chinese and Malaysian markets.

As a newly listed company, we had for the first time S$20 million in our bank account. We needed to use the money, otherwise, investors will start questioning our wisdom for sitting on cash reserves.

Some of these overseas ventures worked while others did not fare as well. We found the smaller projects – such as small clinic chain acquisitions in Nanjing and Beijing – fraught with structural issues so later decided to focus on the bigger projects instead.

One of the noteworthy projects was the acquisition of Aidite (Qinhuangdao) Technology Co. Ltd., a Zirconia block manufacturing company in 2014. Around the same time, we also acquired a 60% stake in China’s Aoxin Stomatology Group.

DRA: Did you experience any difficulties expanding overseas?

NCS: As a Singapore-based entrepreneur, I find that operating a local business is very straightforward but it’s not the same everywhere. The Singapore government is very transparent in its enforcement of rules and regulations, and the local residents are generally law-abiding citizens so it’s quite easy to do business here.

I learned a valuable lesson from our dental practice acquisitions in Johor, Malaysia. In Johor Bahru, we discovered that bad hats were embezzling funds from the clinics. After several instances, we thought ‘enough is enough’ and stopped the acquisition of small practice groups.

Since that time in 2017, we decided that a better way forward is to grow organically and develop our own dental clinics from scratch. That’s how, in Singapore alone, we grew the number of clinics from 60 to 108 over the last five to six years. During the same period, we grew our Malaysian operations from 4 to 45 clinics.

I believe that the growth we are experiencing now is the result of shared core values, culture and philosophy that you have to cultivate from day one.

If you want to see good organic growth results, you must be able to exercise control over these intangibles well, in addition to practical things like staff training and equipment purchases. Additionally, the CAPEX for organic practice building is also much lower. 

DRA: You mentioned that Confucian principles inform your business outlook, which is very people-centric at its core. In what ways do those values and ethics shape your business?

NCS: I strongly believe in Confucian ethics, philosophy, and behaviour. In fact you can speak to anyone in Q&M and they will tell you about these guiding principles, because I’ve been sharing them with all our staff and team members.

The central tenet is “Xiu Shen Qi Jia Zhi Guo Ping Tian Xia” (修身齐家治国平天下). It’s a Chinese proverb that means “Self-Cultivation, Family Governance, Country Peace and World Peace”. No matter what your vocation in life may be, you always start with the “self”. If the core of your being is a strong, healthy and morally upright person, the same qualities will ripple outwards and positively impact your family, country and eventually the world. This is a mindset that we inculcate in everyone who works at Q&M.

When it comes to self-cultivation, we ask for two things. One is to constantly improve your skill set. That’s easy to understand and work towards. For example, you can attend the courses at the Q&M College of Dentistry to improve your clinical, communication, customer service and even inter-personal skills.

The second part, which is to advance one’s mindset, is more challenging to communicate or impart to your team members. The way I do it is to focus on five personality traits or values, which are derived from the Eight Virtues of Confucianism. They are 忠 (Loyalty), 信(Truthfulness), 礼 (Respect), 义(Righteousness), and 廉 (Integrity).

These virtues undergird all the positive traits whether in individuals or people-to-people relationships that would bring about a harmonious working environment. Mutual respect among colleagues, ethical treatment of patients, professional honesty and integrity, leadership by example… you name it.

We believe that going forward, AI diagnostics and AI-assisted dental treatments will be key to dentists making clinically sound decisions based on ethical treatment standards, and not solely dependent on their clinical intuitions.

For a group practice the size of Q&M, we cannot manage the practice “like a mother hen”. Instead we instil values that will foster teamwork and cooperation across 153 locations from Singapore to Malaysia. Personally, I’ve been repeating the mantra like a parent to build up honourable and ethical teammates that support one another.

DRA: How do you encourage or foster such positive traits in your company?

NCS: This is a very difficult exercise. I’ve thought long and hard about how it is possible to extract these five values from people. It’s not easy to remember the tenets let alone practice them.

I try to help my teammates remember the principles through fun and games. During Chinese New Year celebration activities where all my cluster groups would attend, I would take out a stack of cash ­so that anyone who can answer quizzes revolving around these values and principles gets a $100 note. This is of course an expensive way to promote the cause but it’s rather effective and fun.

The other way that we not only encourage but also ensure consistency in the way dentists and staff members treat our patients or administer treatments in a professional and ethical manner is through technology.

Using what is essentially an AI-based Adequate Treatment Planning system, we are taking advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning tools to assist the dentist in disease detection and treatment predictions.

You know the saying, “if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. To a dentist trained in implants, every edentulous patient looks like he or she requires an implant treatment. Conversely, some dentists will take the conservative route regardless of the case specifics. Whether you like it or not, there will always be a measure of conscious or unconscious bias in human decision-making.

We believe that going forward, AI diagnostics and AI-assisted dental treatments will be key to dentists making clinically sound decisions based on ethical treatment standards, and not solely dependent on their clinical intuitions.

That’s why I have a team of some 40 IT experts with whom we’re working hard to develop AI solutions that will set a higher bar for professional and ethical standards of clinical practice at Q&M. In fact, we are at the final stages of rolling out such a system, that I’m proud to say has been approved by the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) of Singapore and Medical Device Authority (MDA) of Malaysia. Who knows, we may even make the system available to other establishments, including dental clinics.

In the meantime, our in-house IT team has developed an AI-powered Integrated Dental Management System (IDMS) that takes about 5 seconds to scan and produce in-depth diagnostic data for every patient that walks into one of our clinics. I believe that we are either the first in Singapore or the whole of Southeast Asia to provide this unique service.

DRA: Which principle or school of thought best defines your current headspace as a leader and entrepreneur?

NCS: I have always been trying to understand why I am still here in the industry when many of my previous competitors are not able to be here or doing what we are doing. For the last two decades, we have been running a dental group profitably without making a loss in any single year. 

I strongly suspect that it has a lot to do with two words ‘she de’ (舍得) which means ‘to give and take’. Xian She Hou De, Duo She Duo De, You She You De, Mei She Mei De (先舍后得，多舍多得, 有舍有得,  没舍没得). The principle holds that when you give, you do not ask for returns. For example, when I gave 40% stakes to new dentists who joined me, I’ve never asked for goodwill appreciation on account of the number of branches. Never.

I’ve been very honourable and ‘clean’ to all my shareholders ­– I don’t cheat them of a single cent – so they trust me. I’m willing to give all this value to my team of people, in the hope that they in turn will give me the five core values that I ask for. They must also practice ‘She De’.

If I can motivate all my dentists, admin staff and nurses to ‘give and take’, I will be running a very sustainable business successfully.