Lenskart's vertical eyewear bet: ₹7,278 Cr IPO, 30x bids, flat debut

Omnichannel eyewear retailer: prescription glasses, lenses, contact lenses, eye tests and smart glasses across India, Southeast Asia, Japan and the Middle East.

Lenskart bets full-stack eyewear — in-house design, manufacturing, stores and AI eye tests — can turn an underserved market into a profitable scale business and an IPO.

Started in 2010; SoftBank Vision Fund led a $275M round in 2019 (first-hand, Vision Fund interview)

Peyush Bansal, then at Microsoft in Seattle, started Lenskart in 2010 after realising roughly half the world needs glasses but half of those people lack them; he began online and moved into stores as trust in the category demanded a physical touchpoint.

Mid-journey, Lenskart drifted into chasing GMV until 80% of revenue came from non-eyewear; Bansal cut that revenue to refocus on the original mission. SoftBank's 2019 round funded a bet on building one of the world's largest eyewear factories. By FY25 revenue reached ₹6,625 Cr (+22%) with a ₹297 Cr net profit after a ₹10 Cr FY24 loss, and the company filed a ₹7,278 Cr IPO.

The IPO (Oct 31–Nov 4, 2025) was subscribed 28.26x, but shares listed on November 10 at a 1.7–3% discount to the ₹402 issue price, then recovered above it after strong Q2 FY26 results.

A massive unmet need — roughly 2.5 billion people globally lack glasses — gave Lenskart a mission worth betting a company on.

Cutting 80% of revenue to refocus on eyewear was the pivotal call: it chose a defensible category over vanity GMV.

Vertical integration (own factories, stores, eye tests) turned a low-margin retail category into 69% product margins.

The muted IPO debut showed that even a profitable, category-leading startup can face valuation scepticism from public markets.

Strong post-listing results proved the underlying bet outlasted the listing-day price signal.

Owning the mission and the supply chain beats chasing GMV: Lenskart's focus on eyewear made it profitable, and the same focus let it absorb a flat IPO debut and keep compounding.

After a flat debut, Lenskart shares recovered: by December 1, 2025 they closed at ₹430.65, up from the ₹390–395 listing, after Q2 FY26 profit jumped 19.8% to ₹103.4 Cr on revenue of ₹2,096.1 Cr. Management credited in-house manufacturing (margins up to 69%), marketing down to 7.5% of revenue, and international markets about three years behind India with faster profitability. The company kept expanding — doubling ~2,700 stores, scaling eye tests from 16 million (FY25) toward 100 million a year, localising frames in a new Hyderabad plant, and launching smart glasses (B by Lenskart) in Q4 FY26.