Our Story

2002: Samera begins

In 2002, Arun Mehra began working on the accounts of his wife, Dr Smita Mehra, and other dentists she knew.

They were highly trained clinicians, but like many dentists, they had been taught very little about the financial and business side of their careers and practices.

Questions about accounts, tax, borrowing, buying practices and making sense of the numbers often sat outside their clinical training.

Arun had a background in accounting, banking and finance, and saw an opportunity to build a firm specifically around the financial and business needs of dentists.

That year, Arun and Smita formally founded Samera.

From the beginning, the work went beyond preparing accounts. Dentists came to Samera for help understanding tax, planning their finances, buying or starting practices, improving their businesses and eventually selling them.

As our clients grew, the questions they brought us grew with them. Valuations, due diligence, business planning, profitability, acquisitions, restructuring and exit planning all became part of the work.

The principle was simple: understand the numbers, understand the dental business behind them, and help clients make better decisions.

2004: We became practice owners too

In 2004, Smita opened The Neem Tree Dental Practice in Wandsworth.

Over the following years, The Neem Tree expanded into further locations, including Canary Wharf and Fleet Street. Some of those practices were later sold, while the group continued to operate practices in Wandsworth and Esher.

That experience changed Samera in an important way. We were no longer only advising dentists from the outside.

We were dealing with the same commercial realities ourselves: finding premises, recruiting teams, managing cash flow, financing equipment, attracting patients, controlling costs, improving profitability and growing EBITDA.

We also experienced first-hand what it takes to build value in a dental practice and eventually realise that value through a sale.

That experience fed directly back into Samera. Our advice on starting, buying, growing and selling practices became more practical because we had been through many of those decisions ourselves.

2016: Samera Finance launches

As more clients came to Samera for help buying, starting and expanding practices, finance became an increasingly important part of the work.

In 2016, we launched Samera Finance Ltd as a dedicated commercial finance brokerage.

That gave clients access to specialist support for practice acquisitions, refinancing, property, equipment, tax and VAT, and squat practice funding through a panel of lenders.

Since launch, Samera Finance has raised more than £250 million for UK dentists.

Finance was not a separate idea bolted onto the business. It grew out of the work Samera was already doing with dentists around buying, starting and growing practices.

Building our own offshore teams, then helping others do the same

As Samera and The Neem Tree grew, we needed more accounting, finance and administrative capacity.

We first tried outsourcing some of that work. It did not work as well as we needed it to. We struggled with consistency, communication, accountability and the feeling that the offshore team was not truly part of the business.

So instead of giving up on the idea, we decided to build the capability ourselves.

We created our own offshore teams to support Samera and The Neem Tree, recruiting, training and managing people directly and building the systems needed to make the model work properly.

Once we had proved the approach inside our own businesses, we started helping other dental groups and DSOs do the same through Samera Global.

For some clients, that means hiring individual offshore accountants, finance staff or administrators. For larger groups, it means building a dedicated Global Capability Centre (GCC) that operates as an extension of their UK business.

Again, the service grew out of solving a problem we had already faced ourselves.

Turning operational problems into software

As Samera and The Neem Tree grew, we kept running into another problem: too many important tasks still depended on spreadsheets, manual checks and repetitive admin.

Because we were dealing with those problems ourselves, we started looking at where technology could remove friction, save time and reduce the risk of mistakes.

That led to Clever Practice, our dental technology business.

Clever Practice builds AI-powered software for dental practices, automating repetitive admin and finance tasks. Its products include automated associate pay, with more tools being developed across practice management and operations.

The approach is the same one that has shaped Samera from the beginning: solve a real problem inside our own businesses, learn what works, then build something useful for other dental practices and groups.

Samera today

What started in 2002 with Arun helping Smita and her colleagues understand the business side of dentistry has grown into a wider group supporting dentists at almost every stage of their careers and businesses.

Today, Samera works across accountancy and tax, buying and starting practices, commercial finance, growth, practice sales, offshore teams and dental technology.

The businesses have evolved, but the principle has stayed the same: understand the problem properly, solve it in a practical way, and build support around the realities of running a dental business.

If you want to be a part of our story and work with us, have a look at our services for dentists.