Dr Dhanraj D Chavan, M.D.

Dr Dhanraj D Chavan is a dermatologist based in Pune, India, with a practice that spans clinical work, a clinic group, and a clinical-AI initiative. His clinical focus is aesthetic and surgical dermatology — primarily acne scars and fat grafting, with aesthetic-dermatology procedures alongside. He serves as Director of ClearSkin and HairMD, a multi-clinic group across Pune. He also leads CSHMD, a separate initiative building clinical-AI tools for dermatology, with particular focus on the conditions and skin tones he sees in clinic.

The rest of this page is in his own words.

Education and training

My MBBS is from Seth G S Medical College and KEM Hospital in Mumbai (2009–2015), one of India’s older government medical colleges with a large attached public hospital. I entered through the open-category merit list with a state rank of 109 in MHT-CET. Earlier schooling was at Sainik School Satara from 2002 to 2007.

After MBBS, I completed an MD in Dermatology at the Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences, Karad (2016–2019), having topped the entrance examination. My residency mentor was Dr Balkrishna Nikam, who shaped my approach to clinical dermatology and dermatosurgery and remains a continued teacher and mentor.

A significant part of my clinical training happened after residency. For fat grafting, I trained with Dr Nilesh Goyal in Mumbai in 2018 — I was the first student of his official autologous fat transplantation and liposculpting fellowship — followed by training with Dr Mario Goisis in Milan, and a visit with the plastic surgeon Dr Steven Cohen in San Diego in July 2022. For phlebology, I trained in foam sclerotherapy under Dr N. Radhakrishnan in Kerala, in varicose-vein management and endovenous techniques under Dr Sergio Gianesini at the University of Ferrara, and in sclerotherapy and endovenous laser ablation under Dr Ravul Jindal in Mohali. The aesthetic-dermatology side came through a fellowship with Dr Jaishree Sharad in Mumbai. The Taylor Liberator and broader use of lasers for dermatologic indications came from a clinic visit with Dr Mark Taylor at Gateway Aesthetic Institute & Laser Center in Salt Lake City in 2022. The ablative laser work I do for acne scars came through training with Dr Asif Hussain in London in 2024 — a hands-on two-to-three week clinical fellowship at his clinic. For hair transplantation, I completed fellowships with Dr Akaki Tsilosani in Georgia and Dr Pradeep Sethi in Delhi, followed by observerships in the United States with Dr Parsa Mohebi (Los Angeles), Dr William Yates (Chicago), Dr John Cole (Atlanta), Dr Robert True (New York), and Dr Robert Dorin (New York).

Clinical practice

My clinical interests sit in conditions that need a layered approach — where a single technique rarely produces a complete result, and the work involves combining modalities and calibrating parameters to skin type and patient profile.

The bulk of my current clinical work centres on two areas:

• Acne scars. My primary focus. Combination treatments using ablative laser (Lumenis UltraPulse and Fotona SP Dynamis Er:YAG), Taylor Liberator, fat grafting, subcision, and microneedling. The combination is chosen patient-by-patient based on scar morphology, skin tone, and acceptable downtime. The Acne Scars page goes into the approach in depth.
• Fat grafting. Both for acne-scar correction and for facial rejuvenation. Microfat, nanofat, and SVF preparations depending on indication.

Earlier in my career I worked extensively in two further areas where I retain training, publications, and ongoing clinical interest, but at lower current volume:

• Hair restoration. I perform hair transplants in advanced grades of baldness — including beard- and body-donor cases — and a meaningful share of redo work, repairing older transplants done elsewhere. Mostly through HairMD.
• Phlebology. My specialty here, learnt from Dr N. Radhakrishnan in Kerala, is low-concentration, high-volume foam sclerotherapy — typically 0.2–0.25% polidocanol rather than the conventional 0.5–1%. The lower concentration permits a much higher total volume per session, which means a whole leg can usually be treated in a single sitting, including large varicose veins and venous ulcers, without real-time ultrasound guidance and with a substantially lower side-effect profile. I presented a 130-patient cohort analysis of safety and efficacy at the World Congress of Dermatology, Milan in 2019; the same body of work earned the S.L. Wadhwa Award at Cuticon Maharashtra, Nagpur in 2018.

Alongside these, the practice covers standard aesthetic-dermatology procedures — botulinum toxin, fillers, and laser treatments for pigmentation and texture concerns.

A common thread runs through all of this. Indian skin (Fitzpatrick types IV–VI) often needs different parameters, different timing, and different sequencing than what most international training implicitly assumes. A meaningful part of what I now teach junior doctors is how to take a technique developed in Western settings and adapt it for Indian patients without losing efficacy.

For patients considering treatment, the brand sites at clearskin.in and hairmdindia.com cover each area in depth.

ClearSkin and HairMD

ClearSkin and HairMD are the two consumer brands of the multi-clinic group I run with my family in Pune. ClearSkin operates the skin clinics — full-service aesthetic and procedural dermatology. HairMD operates the hair-loss clinics — covering hair transplantation alongside PRP, medical treatment, and other non-surgical therapies for hair loss. My parents started the practice; my brother, a plastic surgeon, works in the group; I serve as Director.

Within the group I lead strategy, technology, and medical standards across the clinics. In practice, that means I work between the clinical teams and the operating systems they use day-to-day — Zenoti for patient journey management, Zoho CRM for leads, Zoho HRMS for staff, Tally for accounting. The work I find most useful is what sits on top of those systems: dashboards across each stage of the patient journey, training material for the consultation flow, and standardisation of treatment parameters across doctors and clinics. Reducing variance is where most of the operational ROI lives.

Both brands also run long-standing YouTube channels for patient education in Hindi and English. The ClearSkin channel has crossed 1.1 million subscribers; the HairMD channel — built primarily by my father, Dr Dhananjay Chavan — has crossed 675,000.

CSHMD — the clinical-AI initiative

CSHMD is an AI initiative I’m building alongside the clinical work. The aim is decision-support and second-opinion tooling for dermatology, with particular focus on conditions and skin tones that current public AI handles poorly — most clinical AI is trained on lighter-skin populations, and the resulting tools can fail visibly when applied to the patients I see daily.

Building this from inside a clinical practice — rather than from outside the way most clinical-AI ventures do — changes both what the system is good at and how its mistakes get caught. Staying in practice means I see how tools fail on real cases and can adjust accordingly.

The work is in active development, not deployed. CSHMD is a working name; it isn’t yet incorporated. The Building page on this site goes deeper into what’s been built and what’s in progress.

Talks, research, and awards

The volume of speaking I’ve done is larger than the volume of writing. I’ve spoken at international and national conferences across Italy, Argentina, the Philippines, the United States, Poland, Egypt, Bangladesh, and across India — most often on foam sclerotherapy for varicose veins, regional nerve blocks for dermatosurgery, fat grafting (microfat and nanofat) for acne-scar correction and facial rejuvenation, ablative-laser combinations for acne scars, and hair transplantation in advanced grades of baldness. Recent invitations include ASDS 2024 (American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, Orlando), DSCON 2024 (Bangladesh), BSLMS 2025 (lasers + fat for acne scars), and YAAM-ADAC 2025 (combination treatment of acne scars with energy-based devices). The full catalogue of invited talks, oral papers, and posters is on the Talks & Papers page.

Most of my published research dates from residency and the years immediately after — papers on dermoscopy of spongiotic disorders, frictional facial melanosis as a new clinical entity, hair-transplantation techniques, and laser treatment of trichostasis spinulosa. Awards include the S.L. Wadhwa Award for the foam sclerotherapy work and the Young Dermatologist Dermoscopy Contribution Award at the Asia Pacific Summit on Dermoscopy. The full list is on the Awards page.

I write less than I’d like to currently — most of my writing time goes into the AI work and clinic operations — but I expect to return to publishing as the AI work matures.

What’s current

Most of my time goes to building CSHMD, running clinic operations across ClearSkin and HairMD, and clinical practice — primarily acne scars and fat grafting. I travel a few times a year for conferences, training, and collaborations.

Get in touch

If you’re a clinician working on similar problems, an operator running a clinical group, a researcher in dermatology AI, or someone building tooling adjacent to any of these areas — the contact form on this site is the simplest way to reach me.