Lenskart Case Study: History, Valuation, Product, Services & Growth
Lenskart is an Indian eyewear online portal founded by Peyush Bansal in November 2010 in Delhi. Co-founders Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi joined Peyush at a later date. The company’s portfolio of products ranges from prescription glasses, contact lenses to sunglasses.
HISTORY
Peyush, is the founder & CEO of the company Valyoo Technologies, which is the parent company of LensKart. He pursued his Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering — IT, Control & Automation from McGill University, Canada in 2006. Before he returned to India to pursue his PG in Management from IIM, Bangalore Peyush worked as a Program Manager with Microsoft for a year.
During his IIM days, he launched his company, Valyoo Technologies with SearchMyCampus as the first business portal in 2007. It was a classifieds site for students that went beyond accommodation to books, part-time jobs, carpool facilities, and internship opportunities. His motto was to solve any and every issue that a student might have.
SearchMyCampus was a big hit, but Peyush wanted to explore it in the e-commerce world. While exploring opportunities, he came across the eyewear segment which was even ignored by the big boys of e-commerce, viz., Amazon & eBay. He launched Flyrr.com — which was focussed on the eyewear market in the US.
Flyrr was gaining good traction and this prompted him to test the waters in the Indian markets and launched Lenskart in November 2010. They started with just selling contact lenses and added eyeglasses a few months later. Finally, in March 2011 they added sunglasses to their portfolio and placed themselves in the fashion accessory segment.
VALUATION
The company had a valuation of $1.5 billion by Dec 2019 after Softbank invested around $275 million. Peyush Bansal, a former Microsoft employee, founded Lenskart in 2010 along with Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi.
Financial backers of Lenskart include TPG Growth, International Finance Corp, and Adveq Management. Ratan Tata (of Tata Sons) and S Gopalakrishnan (of Infosys) have also invested in Lenskart. In March 2018 Wipro Chairman Azim Premji invested 400cr in the group taking the valuation of the company to 3000 Crore. By 2016 Lenskart had become one of the two top optical chains in India, along with Titan Eye Plus. Its manufacturing facility in Delhi manufactures 300,000 glasses a month.
PRODUCT & SERVICES
-Eyeglasses.
-Premium Eyeglasses.
-Sunglasses.
-Shape. Wayfarer. Oval. Rounders. Cat Eye. Size. Small.
-Brands. Bausch and Lomb. Johnson & Johnson. Alcon.
-Color Contact Lenses, and many more.
GROWTH
Lenskart becomes the last unicorn company in the year 2019. Lenskart is a New Delhi based startup founded in 2010. Lenskart app is with the widest collection of Specs, Sunglasses, Goggles, Frames, Anti Glare, Contact Lens, etc. Lenskart is India’s No.1 Online Shopping app for Specs, Sunglasses, Goggles, Frames, Anti Glare, Contact Lens, Reading Glasses, Computer Glasses, Try Glasses at Home, Prescription Sunglasses & Eye Accessories. Lenskart adopted an innovative approach to take customers in conversation with Lenskart via emails throughout the buying cycle. Unlike the traditional way of communication where customers were just informed about the status of their order, the company adopted the base of the full-duplex model where customers were able to share views, express their thoughts in the process and be virtually engaged. By giving importance to customer experiences and engaging in open communication, the brand becomes more human and builds trust.
Lenkart is providing 5000 styles of eyewear to choose from and gives free home delivery with 14 days replacement guarantee. From sunglasses to reading glasses to contact lenses, Lenskart makes everything in eyewear categories. Now with a chain of offline stores, Lenkart has acquired both online and offline markets of eye wears.
INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS
Financial backers of Lenskart include TPG Growth, International Finance Corp, and Adveq Management. Ratan Tata (of Tata Sons) and S Gopalakrishnan (of Infosys) have also invested in Lenskart. In March 2018 Wipro Chairman Azim Premji invested 400cr in the group taking the valuation of the company to 3000 Crore. By 2016 Lenskart had become one of the two top optical chains in India, along with Titan Eye Plus. Its manufacturing facility in Delhi manufactures 300,000 glasses a month. Lenskart also has a factory in Zhengzhou (China) which manufactures about 50% of the production. Lenskart launched the eyewear brand John Jacobs in 2017 and for that brand aimed to touch Rs 500 crore in revenue in two years. In 2018 the company became profitable (EBITD).
The company is in talks with the Japanese group SoftBank as well as the private equity firm Kedaara Capital for investment. These investments will make Lenskart next unicorn.
In October 2017, Lenskart’s first brand ambassador was Katrina Kaif. In March 2019 the company roped in Bhuvan Bam as their first male brand ambassador.
