Daybreak - Lenskart is a case study in how an Indian retailer can go global

Episode Date: August 24, 2025

Lenskart is gearing up for a nearly $1 billion IPO after closing FY25 on a strong note with ₹6,652 crore in revenue and ₹297 crore in profit. What’s even more impressive is that almost 40% of that revenue now comes from its more than 600 stores outside India, rare feat for an Indian consumer brand.Unlike peers such as Zomato and Ola that stumbled in global markets, Lenskart has taken a slow-and-steady approach, leaning on selective acquisitions, smart investments, and joint ventures to expand abroad. At the heart of its success is a vertically integrated supply chain that gives the company pricing power, agility in launching new products, and the ability to deliver consistent quality no matter the geography. Tune in.Want to join The Ken's team? Fill this form.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too? It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. Lenskart's journey to an IPO listing was all over the news when it was first announced. But while the story is not about the impending IPO, Lenskart becoming a global phenomenon certainly could not hurt its popularity with retail investors. And that is what we're going to look at today.

Lenskart's steady and so far successful global expansion initiatives. Just last month, in the same week as the filing of its DHSB, Lenskart acquired an 80% stake in Spanish eyewear brand Mela for 400 crore rupees. Now, this is just the latest in a series of acquisitions and growth strategies that the IOWA brand has been adopting for the last few years. Currently, it operates more than 600 stores across 14 countries, which makes about 40% of its total revenue. But even as Lenskart spreads its wings, Piyush Bansal, the CEO and founder, is in no rush to fly too close to the sun. You see, Lenskart has a good fortune of being able to learn and adapt from stories of other Indian companies that have tried to expand too far, too fast.

Take Oyo, for instance, which had to pull out after a very aggressive global rollout, or even Zomato, which shut down all its overseas operations and later referred to them as quote-unquote experiments. Like every successful startup, Lenskart has big ambitions. It wants to be the SLR Luxottica of the East. Eselor Luxottica is a company behind eyewire giants like Rayban and Oakley. And so far, unlike its predecessors, it has to be a lot of the east. been bucking the global shutdown trend. The impressive part is Lenskart does not owe its growth

to brute force or billions spent in advertising. Instead, it is to do with something that is more true to the ideal startup story. Discipline, innovative technology and ironically enough, restraint. And if this keeps working in their favor, then they might just turn into something even rarer than a unicorn, a truly global retailer going public, a first in the Indian startup history. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host, Nickha Sharma, and I don't chase the news cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rahal Philipos and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 25th of August. Like I mentioned earlier, Lenskart is not really going somewhere that no one else

has ever gone before. Companies like Oyo and Zomato and Ola have tried and failed to expand globally. But Lenskot is employing a strategy that seems almost too simple once explained. Look at Zomato, for example. It decided to expand in 2012 and in a little over three years had a presence in 24 countries. This included large markets like the US, Canada, Brazil and South Africa. Sounds pretty impressive, right? But we spoke to a senior analyst at Ratings Agency Chrysill, and guess what they told us?

This strategy led Zomato to spend huge amounts of money on customer acquisition and also deal with regulatory impediments across geographies. So even though they touched break-even, it was impossible to sustain. By 2024, the company had no option but to pull the plug on most of its international markets. Lenskart's approach has been significantly more measured. and highly selective. Rocks Maxwell, a global strategy lead at VET markets, a multi-asset broker, told us that Lenskart was focusing on markets like UAE, Singapore and Japan. These are markets where consumer demand and market dynamics are better aligned with

India's and are also better at supporting Lenskart's existing business model. Not just that, Lenskart is leveraging its deep pockets to partner and acquire local players in new geographies. And this saves them the trouble of having to build from the ground up and gives them access to existing customer bases. So what did their first step abroad really look like? Well, in 2019, they began with their acquisition of the Japanese Iwear brand Own Days. This move was a real jackpot.

Not only did this acquisition add about 400 stores to Glenn Scott's global chain, but it also gave them immediate access to local market knowledge. and infrastructure. This saved them years of initial market entry friction. It also made strategic investments in the San Francisco-based immersive product visualization startup called Metadome, Israel-based 6 over 6 that develops AI-powered solutions for the optical industry and France's Le Petit Loonitier. It has even set up a joint venture with Baufeng Framecart in China to manufacture frames. So, as you can see, Lenskart's money moves have been persistent and careful. Bansal made own days five offers before finally acquiring them for $400 million.

And their first move together was to consolidate their market in Southeast Asia. But what is interesting is that Bunssel has probably declined more checks than he has accepted. Even when SoftBank wanted to invest in Lenskart in 2019, Bansal took nearly six months to accept the offer That too, only after he had come up with a viable product market fit, cultural fit and a clear plan for deploying capital. That is probably why Onda's founders Takeshi Umayama and Shuji Tanaka are still leading the company. Currently, Len Scott has 18,000 employees from over 25 nationalities. In the financial year 2025, they launched more than 100 in-house designed and engineered collections. These collections included those that were launched in collaboration with popular brands and celebrities like Karin Johar and Suria Kumar Yadav.

So, what is next for them? Stay tuned to find out. The global eyewear market is currently valued at about $180 billion. And it is expected to grow to about $220 billion by the financial year 2030. Of that prescription eyewear, which is Lenskart's raison d' debtor, alone accounts for 70%. So, the opportunity for Lenskart is tremendous. Particularly considering that Asia is the fastest growing market for IWEL. So it is perfectly positioned to dominate this region, especially considering the foothold that

it already has in South Asia. But Lenskart has even bigger ambitions. It is also eyeing markets like the US, where its premium brands are supposed to make an entrance. This particular phase of expansion might be trickier though. First and foremost, consumer behavior in the U.S. is notoriously different from what Lenskart is used to. Iwear is more of a fashion statement there and several established companies already have brand trust and customer loyalty. Add to that, increasing diplomatic tensions and tariff troubles, and the U.S. market might be a tough nut to crack.

Lenskart will be essentially pitting itself against industry stalwarts like Rayban owner, SLOLL Exotica, and Prescription Eyewear retailer Warby Parker. Now, Wobby Parker is probably a close contemporary to Lenscott. They both launched in 2010 and are strong players in the retail prescription eyewear game. But after a very successful run for a few years, recently Wobby Parker has been going through its own challenges. Customer acquisition, rising competition and an over-reliance on the US market are all getting in the way of its growth. And this trajectory may hint at what Lenskart's journey could look like in this.

that market. But Maxwell, who I mentioned earlier, believes that Lenskart has three key advantages here. One, its vertically integrated model, two, its reliance on private labels, and three, competitive pricing due to its well-established supply chain. This shows in the numbers too. In the financial year 2025, Lenskart's revenue from its international business grew by nearly 17% by leveraging existing customer satisfaction and their frugality by consistently offering affordable pricing, Lenskart has ensured an average purchase frequency in the last two years of 3.6 eyeglasses. That's in comparison to the Indian average of 1.8 eyeglasses, according to its DRHP filing. After all, glasses are healthcare essentials. They're not your 2am impulse buys. Customer loyalty

is high and healthy margins are an assurance. There's also a ripe opportunity in online retail. That aspect has seen less penetration. Less than 5% of prescription IOS sales in India happened online. Lenscott may have a slight edge with its Omnichannel model, which combines tactile in-store experiences with tech-led digital interfaces in bridging the trust gap. In fact, visiting its new stores might actually give you deja vu because they resemble Apple stores,

complete with clean layout, guided customer journeys, and data-driven personalization. Now, the challenge is to streamline logistics for the global market since most of the manufacturing is being done in India. Lenskart already has implemented a fast logistics network in markets such as Singapore and UAE. But building a transnational brand and retail franchisee is an evolving culture game. For now at least, it seems that Lenskart is expanding with its eyes wide open. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber. Foccuriced business news platform.

What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted by Snigda Sharma and edited by Rajiv CN.