Lenskart’s four promoters will continue to hold nearly 17-18% of the eyewear retailer even after collectively selling more than 240 million shares in the public issue—the highest shareholding retained by promoters post-issue among new-age listed companies.
The promoters—founder and chief executive Peyush Bansal, his sister and co-founder Neha Bansal, Sumeet Kapahi, and Amit Chaudhary, who together own a 20% stake—will still manage to bag upwards of ₹2,000 crore, booking multi-fold returns.
However, for Peyush, who recently raised his stake to about 10%, it’s not the monetary gains that move the needle. “These things are part of the evolutionary process. I don’t think the motivation is whether you’re a millionaire or a billionaire. Motivation comes if you’re able to do what the company is supposed to do. Beyond a point, a few percentages higher or lower does not matter.”
The “promoter” tag helps the founder bring more skin in the game. “Being a promoter is definitely helpful from a perspective that your skin is in the game much longer, and you are really putting yourself out there. It shows that I’m going to be there in thick and thin. There is an emotional value attached to being a promoter for all the stakeholders,” he told Mint in an interview, ahead of the 31 October initial public offering (IPO).
“If I have the luxury to be a promoter, I would want to be one. And so would be my co-founders,” he added.
His post-issue stake alone will stand at about 8.7%.
On the valuation
Lenskart will see its valuation being driven by a market dynamic commanded by its buyers and sellers, leaving the founding team to focus on creating value for customers, according to Peyush.
“As far as I think, valuation multiple is a discussion between buyers and sellers. The valuation is wherever the minds meet. I’m sure that when a company goes public, the buyers and sellers will strike the right balance. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” he said.
“Our job, as entrepreneurs, is to continue to create value for the customer,” he added.
The firm expects to raise ₹7,300 crore from the IPO, including ₹2,150 crore through a fresh issue of shares. Its promoters and existing investors will sell 127.5 million shares via an offer for (OFS).
The IPO price band has been fixed at ₹382 to ₹402 per share of face value ₹2. The subscription opens on 31 October and will close on 4 November.
The company is targeting a valuation of $8 billion, slightly lower than its initial ask of $9 billion.
If that happens, the will result in some of its early backers, including Temasek, US-based asset manager Fidelity Investments, SoftBank, and Kedaara Capital, booking multi-fold gains, as the company was valued at $2.4 billion in 2021.
The retailer last closed a private funding round led by and Fidelity in 2024, which valued the company at $5 billion. In June, Fidelity marked up the fair value of Lenskart in its books to $6.1 billion. Last week, billionaire investor Radhakishan Damani, founder of Avenue Supermarts, the parent of supermarket chain DMart, reportedly invested around ₹90 crore in a pre-IPO funding round.
For context, its Indian rival Titan Co. Ltd, which runs Titan Eyeplus, is valued at $40 billion, although the figure pertains to the larger, more diversified business.
EssilorLuxottica, the global eyewear leader and the owner of Ray-Ban and Oakley, is currently valued at nearly $150 billion.
eyewear segment’s income grew 16% year-on-year to ₹192 crore in the fourth quarter of 2024-25, while EssilorLuxottica’s revenue stood at $8 billion during the same quarter.
Lenskart bounced back to profitability in 2024-25, with a bottom line of ₹297 crore, compared to a loss of ₹10 crore in the year-ago period. Its operating revenue grew 23% to ₹6,653 crore from ₹5,428 crore in 2023-24. However, revenue growth in both Indian and international businesses slowed compared to the previous year.
On starting early
Despite being early in its journey, Peyush believes going public will fuel growth. “I wouldn’t obsess about competition too much. I haven’t compared Lenskart to any peer,” he said.
“It’s [going public] is a natural evolution for the company. If you look at Amazon, Netflix, and some other technology companies, they went public very early in their journeys. It really allowed them to scale things to the next level. At Lenskart, we’re early in our journey. We now need to jump to the next curve of orbit of scaling this into building a global brand, and in India, take it from 10-20 million people to about 100 million people,” he added.
“In terms of management and overall maturity of the company, we are now ready to flex our muscles for the next set of partners.”
Describing Lenskart’s roadmap to sustained profitability and growth, he noted the company feels more ready to take the public-market route now than before. “I do think that as a company, we are a lot more ready at this stage than we were a few years ago. From a profitability perspective, we are not fighting the battle of red or green. I think we’re just making sure that the conversation right now is about how we can bring vision for a billion people.”
Lenskart’s IPO will be one of the largest public-market listings in the country in 2024, following the debuts of LG Electronics ( ₹11,600 crore) and Tata Capital ( ₹15,500 crore) in September. Among new-age technology companies, its offering is the largest so far, ahead of other significant upcoming tech IPOs, including the planned listings of wealth management platform Groww (expected to be ₹7,000 crore) and payments firm Pine Labs (expected to be ₹6,100 crore?).
New frontiers
The company will use the IPO proceeds primarily to invest in technology, expand company-owned stores, and fund brand-building and marketing initiatives.
“A lot of investment in technology is required to democratize eyewear,” said Peyish, adding that the firm is looking at how emerging technologies can be used to improve accuracy and access. Earlier in October, it announced that it would integrate direct UPI payments into its upcoming B Camera smartglasses, enabling users to complete transactions by scanning a QR code with their smartglasses, without the need for a phone or PIN.
Despite being a costly discovery channel, offline expansion will continue to be a focus area for Lenskart, according to Peyush. “Firstly, we don’t keep inventory in the store. We run it through our centralized supply chain, which makes our model light. Secondly, people walking into our stores are those who have been engaging with us on our online platform, and trying virtual try-ons and other features. There is a very clear intent to buy. In fact, the eye-test service we provide in the stores generates very high value for the customer,” he noted.
Founded in 2010 by Peyush as an online eyewear retail company, Lenskart quickly grew into a prominent consumer-facing brand, operating online and offline. It sells several brands, including John Jacobs, Vincent Chase, Oaks, and Hustlr. It has raised $1.08 billion across 19 funding rounds to date.
As of March 2025, it had a total of 2,723 physical stores, of which 703 were opened in the last two fiscal years. It sold a total of 22.9 million eyewear units in 2024-25 in India, and 4.2 million units in Japan, Middle East, and Southeast Asia through its premium vertical Owndays.
The road less travelled
The IPO comes nearly 15 years after the company’s launch. Shortly after founding the eyewear brand in 2010, Peyush established three additional e-commerce companies—WatchKart, BagsKart, and JewelsKart—under the parent company Valyoo Technologies.
However, it was shut down soon after, not because it struggled, but because it was doing too well, according to Peyush.
“It actually worked out better than I thought it would because more than 80% of our revenue was coming from bags and jewellery, thanks to higher ticket sizes. But we believed there was only incremental value creation. We asked ourselves, “Are you really delivering something extraordinary that didn’t exist?”
This led Bansal to take the road less travelled. “We wanted to take all things eyewear directly to the consumer. We enable visual correction eye testing. We provided glasses for kids to slow down myopia progression. That’s a lot more value addition than before.”
“Somewhere, wisdom and luck prevailed that we exited all of that. The category that was 20% of our business then became a lot bigger,” he added.