Laying eyewear optic fibre to make 400 mn specs per year: Lenskart's Bansal

As part of that strategy, the SoftBank-backed firm is setting up the world's largest eyewear manufacturing plant in Bhiwadi, a city in Rajasthan

Peyush Bansal is passionate about running and eyeglasses. He has a personal collection of over 100 pairs of spectacles and wears some of them during his early morning 15-km run. These include his favourite sky blue transparent wayfarer eyewear that he wore on the reality television series Shark Tank India. 

“It has an odd colour. But after I wore it on Shark Tank, it became the most popular colour and the specs went out of stock,” said Bansal, founder and chief executive officer of eyewear company Lenskart, in an interview. “The biggest difference between us and other companies is that we are not about how this industry has been working, but what is possible.”

An ex-Microsoft techie, Bansal’s vision is to build the world’s largest eyewear firm; he aims to ship 300-400 million spectacles a year and serve 50 per cent of users in India. 

“To really serve, we need to lay the optic fibre of eyewear and create a system where you can make about 300-400 million specs a year,” said Bansal. “We're creating a centralised model via which one can order eyewear from any part of India and the world and customised products can be made and dispatched within two-three hours.”

As part of that strategy, the SoftBank-backed firm is setting up the world's largest eyewear manufacturing plant in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan. It shall have the capacity to ship 50 million pairs of eyewear a year. Bansal is investing about $150 million to build this facility.

Lenskart is looking to capture half of the domestic eyewear market. Bansal said companies, such as Reliance’s Jio, Maruti, Asian Paints, and IndiGo, have already done that in their respective sectors.

The firm recently closed a $200-million funding round, led by Alpha Wave Global (previously Falcon Edge), where its valuation rose by over a third to $4.5 billion, according to sources.

Fresh funds shall help the company to expand globally and make acquisitions. Lenskart recently bought a majority stake in Japan’s direct-to-consumer eyewear brand Owndays. 

This acquisition is expanding Lenskart’s presence in 13 Asian markets, including India, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan. The deal, according to sources, is estimated to be worth $400 million. The two firms combined have a revenue run rate of $650 million in the ongoing financial year with $400 million from Lenskart and the rest from Owndays, according to the sources.

Currently, Lenskart is focused on tapping India, Southeast Asia and West Asia, where cases of myopia are prevalent. “We would also look at the US market in the next 3-4 years,” said Bansal.

What is also helping Lenkart expand globally is its subsidiary Neso Brands, which invests in eyewear brands and helps them grow. This year Singapore-based Neso raised more than $100 million in its first funding round. “We will be looking to acquire European brands and bring them to this platform,” said Bansal.

The opportunity is huge for Lenskart as the global eyewear market size is anticipated to reach $323.77 billion by 2030, according to a report by Grand View Research. The market is expected to exhibit a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.4 per cent from 2022 to 2030.

Globally and in India, Delhi-based Lenskart competes with players, such as Titan Eyeplus, Specsmakers, Vision Express, Warby Parker, and Italian eyewear conglomerate Luxottica Group. Bansal said one of the biggest differentiators for the company is its technology capabilities, including in-house robotic lens manufacturing and assembling. It is making large investments in technology and supply chain automation. The firm is also looking to expand its tech team -- from 300 people currently to 500 in FY23.

In India, 90 per cent of the specs market is unorganised. According to Lenskart, there is one optometrist for every 50,000 people (this figure for the United Kingdom is one per 7,000 people). As many as 153 million people in the country need reading glasses but do not have access to them: This was the problem that Bansal, an alumnus of IIM-Bangalore and Canada-based McGill University, wanted to address when he founded Valyoo Technologies (Lenskart) in 2010, along with his two co-founders Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi.

Lenskart now ships over 10 million pairs of eyewear every year and has over 20 million app downloads, besides over 1,200 stores across India, Singapore, and Dubai. It looks to expand further and add 400 stores. Besides selling the products online, the firm sells them at various pharmacy shops, providing the service at home, and even takes orders over the phone. 

The company grew by 65 per cent year-on-year in 2021 and is on track to grow by another 50 per cent in 2022. It posted an operating revenue of over Rs 905 crore in FY21 and a profit of nearly Rs 29 crore, according to a regulatory filing.

“We are still early in this journey of eyewear disruption and it is still day one for us,” said Bansal.

Vision clarity

• $4.5 billion Lenskart’s valuation after the latest round of fundraising
• 13 Asian markets the company has a presence
• 10 mn pairs of eyewear Lenkart currently ships every year
• 1,200 stores across India, Singapore, and Dubai
• 20 mn app downloads
• $323.77 bn in expected size of global eyewear market by 2030