One-third of the world’s blind live in India. Lenskart wants to change that with $21M funding

Indian etailer of prescription eyeglasses, sunglasses, and contact lenses Lenskart announced a series C round of funding of INR 1.3 billion (US$21.2 million) today. Private equity firm TPG Growth led the round in which Hong Kong based TR Capital and existing investor IDG Ventures participated.

Lenskart was founded in 2010 by former Microsoft product manager Peyush Bansal along with friends Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi. The store offers a wide range of prescribed and fashion eyewear from leading brands like Rayban, Oakley, Tag Heuer, and Fastrack.

The site has personalized features to help a customer pick a suitable eyewear online, one-year product warranty, and 14-days no-questions-asked return policy.

Niche ecommerce players like Lenskart, furniture etailer Urban Ladder, and jewelry estore Bluestone have been growing fast in India as more and more people are loosening purse strings online. Besides convenience and wider choice, a key bait luring Indian shoppers online is discounts.

Lenskart too claims to offer its products at a much lower price than those at offline stores. “The fact that there is no middleman involved means the company can pass on the benefit of reduced costs to customers in the form of almost 70 percent lower prices,” CEO and co-founder Peyush Bansal says.

An offline-online combination model

For those who prefer to try and test spectacles before buying, Lenskart offers home eye check-ups. An optometrist would visit you with about 200 popular frames to choose from, conduct eye tests, and place an online order for your lenses as per your prescription. This service is currently available in seven cities, including Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi. The company claims to be clocking over 300 home eye check-ups every day.

Currently, Lenskart delivers in 450 Indian cities. More than 60 percent of its business comes from second and third tier cities, which have few branded offline stores. In such cities, it has “Click & Mortar Franchisee Stores” – local centers for people to get their eyes checked and book orders online as well as get their post-sale adjustments done. It also has a network of affiliate doctors who place orders for their consumers online on the Lenskart platform.

This combination of online and offline modes seems to have worked for Lenskart. According to Bansal, in the last two years Lenskart’s revenues have grown more than 200 percent year on year, but no absolute numbers are provided. Its employee strength stands at 150 currently. It raised US$4 million from IDG Ventures in October 2011, and US$10 million from Ronnie Screwvala-led Unilazer Ventures in February 2013.

“With this new investment, we will be hiring the best talent and give them a world-class environment to innovate and solve India’s eyewear problems at a very large scale,” Bansal says.

Serial entrepreneur with four ventures