The Eyewear Industry in India is profoundly sloppy and overwhelmed with unbranded items. Retail consultancy firm Wazir Advisors says prescription based eyewear makes up around 80 percent of all-out sales, trailed by contact lenses and sunglasses. Statistical surveying firm Euromonitor International conjectures in a report discharged in July 2018 that deals of eyewear in India will increment to ₹39,702.77 crores in 2023 from ₹28,431.74 crores in 2018. An April 2018 report by United Kingdom-based research organization Overseas Development Institute found that India has 477 million individuals needing vision amendment. “Just 25% wear them [spectacles],” says Bansal. Lenskart tickers around 30,000 glasses every day and is hoping to build its day by day deals to 100,000 in around 10 years. And, after its all said and done, he says, Lenskart may be tending to only 30% of the market.
Another purpose behind expectation is the normal bounce in marked eyewear deals. As customers become progressively cognizant about design and brands, the development of branded eyewear deals is relied upon to be in the scope of 15-18% every year, as per Wazir Advisors. This has prodded style brands like United Colors of Benetton, Levi’s, Jack and Jones, Tommy Hilfiger, ZARA, H&M, and Killer to enter the portion in a major manner. Indian brands, for example, IDEE, Himalaya Optical, and GKB Opticals, as well, are making sincere efforts to grab the market share.
Lenskart is planning to come up with an Initial Public Offering in the next four years and gearing up to launch 1000 stores by 2022. It was recently reported that Eyewear solutions company Lenskart is getting ready to double its store count to hit a thousand stores in the next 2-3 years.
“So far we have raised near $400 million and its vast majority has come as of late. We haven’t sent any of it yet. The arrangement is to convey a large portion of it in innovation and assembling. This is raised for more than 5 years and this year we will take a gander at putting around $50 million in assembling,” he said.
Peyush Bansal, the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Lenskart, has revolutionized the eyewear industry in India.
“At the point when the organization was incepted, it was incepted with the objective to reform eyewear in India. So the greatest achievement was going to homes to do eye tests. The second greatest achievement was that that wasn’t sufficient and afterward many individuals are shopping in the business sectors, they need a purchaser brand, so let us go open stores so they can contact and feel our edges and we can in any case transport it from a focal office,” Bansal said.
Demand is additionally pushing retailers to offer better limits and combo bargains on buys. “The thought is to expand the quantity of contact lenses and glass buys per individual,” says Baqar Naqvi, Director, consumer products and retail division, Wazir Advisors.
Lenskart’s development in the last money related year is telling. The organization, set up in 2010, revealed a 70% hop in absolute income to ₹310.98 crores in FY18 from ₹182.02 crores in FY17, as indicated by filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). “We mean to proceed with that pattern of growing fifty percent one year from now too,” says Bansal.
Bansal’s vision for the organization is to extend its essence from 120 urban areas to 500 through 2,500 stores in the following 10 years. He says it is vital to have a solid nearness in urban areas, for example, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Noida, and Gurugram, just as the Northeast, which are populated by youthful recent college grads. Almost 60% of online customers on Lenskart are from metros and the rest from level 2 and level 3 urban areas, where Lenskart plans to set up littler stores of around 200 sq. ft. each.
About 60-70% of Lenskart’s business is passed through online deals. Its physical nearness is through franchisees. Lenskart is currently investigating the shop-in-shop group—under which an organization opens for business on another organization’s retailing premises—and is in chats with hypermarkets to sell through this course.
Bansal, an engineering graduate from Canada’s McGill University and a former student of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, is likewise investigating the higher sections of the market and plans to inject more assets into Lenskart’s reasonable premium eyewear brand John Jacobs in the following financial year. In May 2018, Lenskart put a large portion of a million dollars in California-based startup ThinOptics, which makes slim, temple-less frames. In December 2017, it put $1 million in Israel-based startup 6over6 to assist customers with checking the intensity of their eyes and lenses in their eyeglasses through a cell phone application.
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Regardless of its extension plans, Bansal says the organization has no designs to raise assets starting at now. Yet, he indicates that there may be some optional arrangements by the organization which has turned productive. In August 2018, private value firm TR Capital and Hong Kong-based fence investments Steadview Capital made an auxiliary interest in Lenskart, said a report in The Economic Times. The exchange, which as indicated by the report esteemed Lenskart at about ₹3,400 crores, saw the exit of TPG Growth, Ronnie Screwvala-drove Unilazer Ventures, and IDG Ventures India. Zurich-based resource the executive’s organization Adveq and IFC—the private segment speculation arm of the World Bank—are its different financial specialists.
On its mission for a piece of the pie, the primary significant adversary that Lenskart must beat is Tata’s Titan. Its eyewear business—retailed under the Titan Eye Plus store brand propelled in March 2007—has situated itself as a fashion accessories label as opposed to only a prescription based brand. “The Titan brand name and the customer trust related with it [will help] Titan keep on doing admirably in the market. Further, with its image Fastrack forcefully pushing style frill including eyewear, this section is required to develop at a quick pace,” says Naqvi.
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Lenskart’s greater opponents are much in front of it now. In 2017, at 2.6%, Titan had the second most elevated piece of the pie as far as retail an incentive after French Contact Lenses manufacturer Essilor International at 10.3%, as indicated by the Euromonitor International report. Lenskart’s piece of the overall industry in esteem terms remained at 0.5%. Be that as it may, the open door for development is immense. Also, Lenskart is attempting to move forward with inventive administrations, for example, 3D virtual preliminaries accessible on its site and doorstep eye tests.
Specialists accept that players, for example, Lenskart have colossal development potential as clients begin searching for additional choices and brands, yet client experience and maintenance will be significant. “The client will move straightforwardly from chaotic to on the web or omnichannel stores as there are not many-sorted out players,” cautions Wazir Advisors’ Naqvi. “Be that as it may, in the event that they neglect to convey on the item quality and client experience, they should keep limiting to pull in new clients and the bottom line will suffer.”
“At that point, the following large achievement was stating, this is likewise insufficient. By the day’s end purchaser isn’t accepting the channel, they are not accepting on the web, disconnected or home, they are really purchasing a couple of specs. At that point, the pair of specs should be such a great amount of better than what they can purchase. So we frequently used to state at Rs 2,000 you ought to get something which is worth Rs 20,000 in the market. A ton of the business pros that go to our office today really wonder how we gave the entirety of this for Rs 2,000. That was the greatest achievement,” he included.
Peyush Bansal in his most recent meeting said that “We need to be the Maruti [Maruti Suzuki, India’s biggest car manufacturer] of eyewear in India.” The Faridabad-headquartered firm is hoping to catch half of the Indian eyewear market in the following 10 years. Bansal gauges 1.2 million glasses are sold in the nation each day consistently.