Peyush Bansal’s strategy to make lenskart successful

Peyush Bansal’s strategy to make lenskart successful | Strategies used by Peyush Bansal which turned Lenskart into a 2.5 billion dollar startup

Lenskart is a revolutionary unicorn, which has brought about significant changes in the eyewear industry.

Until Lenskart revolutionized the eyewear industry and the concept of wearing spectacles, people with poor eyesight faced social stigmas, such as being referred to as “nerdy” or “geeky”. As Lenskart says, “specs is the new sexy.”

It is no longer uncommon for people to remove their glasses to look good. But how has Lenskart, a tech-based aggregator of eyewear, changed the eyewear industry? Let’s study it to get the answer.

About Lenskart

Lenskart is a chain of optical retail stores in New Delhi, India that manufactures 3 lakh glasses a month based on prescriptions. As of September 2020, they have more than 500 stores in more than 40 cities across India.

The idea behind starting Lenskart

This is a story that dates back to the early 2000s back in the day of buying specs was a cumbersome procedure you first had to take time out and go to the optician to select suitable frames from a limited collection check on various styles and choose your glasses and then finally wait for six to seven day before receiving your glasses.

Back then, the eyewear market in India was dominated by unorganized players selling cheap products without guarantees and no warranties, whereas the organized market was dominated by specs you could buy starting at 1500 rupees, but even that was only available from 2007 onwards, and below this category, there were just a few reputable brands and this is where the Shark Peyush Bansal and his Co-founders saw a mammoth business opportunity and they spotted three problems that needed to be addressed in the eyewear of Indian.

The first problem was the cost which gave them a huge scope to play in the 250 rupees to 1500 rupees segment number

Number two was that eyewear was still being treated like medical equipment which did not make the people with glasses feel good it was very similar to how people with a hearing aid feel today and,

Lastly, let alone affordability even accessibility to opticians was very very limited in India more than 500 million people need vision correction and yet not even 200 million people are doing something about it, on top of that in the tier 2 tier 3 cities even today there is a dire need of opticians this a reason why Peyush Bansal and his co-founder started Lenskart with a vision to correct the vision of India.

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Strategies used by Peyush Bansal which turned Lenskart into a 2.5 billion dollar startup

So riding the e-commerce wave Lenskart entered the prescription glasses market with three value prepositions: cost, convenience and variety while the cheapest branded product which was tied in I plus was 1500 Rupees.

Lenskart’s pricing strategy

Lenskart cut its margins and started selling at a bare minimum price of 250 rupees while local opticians took six to seven days to deliver your glasses. Lenskart started delivering them in just 72 hours. While local opticians have just a few hundred designs Lenskart has 5000 designs to choose from.

Lenskart’s premium quality products

While local opticians did not give any guarantee or warranty on unbranded products, Lenskart gave one year warranty on frames, and one year for lenses and to make it even better they even introduced the 14 days no question asked return policy.

Therefore Lenskart provided all the perks of a branded product at a cost of an unbranded product, on top of that while glasses from local opticians often had a margin of error Lenskart delivered their products with zero error tolerance and merely because of this massive scale.

Lenskart’s D2C selling strategy

Lenskart was able to completely eliminate the middleman through its online model and was able to cut the cost by nearly 70 per cent this is the reason why they could sell their products at such low prices and this is how Lenskart entered the Indian market with a bang but just like any other new business model Lenskart tackled the adoption challenges very very elegantly to lure the sceptics of e-commerce they rolled out crazy offers like free frames and heavy discounts to tackle the lack trial problem they came out with their revolutionary virtual try-on feature and they spent a ton of money in making eyewear look cool with the lifestyle marketing and most importantly they very very strategically eliminated the very need to go to the opticians.

When people doubted their vision they have to go to an optician who had the equipment to check their vision and then they give the power figures to the customers now since people have already stepped out of the house many people would Likely order from the same opticians herself otherwise they have to come home open the computer because mobile internet wasn’t good back then go online enter the power on Lenskart.com and then place the order and this friction itself reduces the chances of people going to Lenskart.com.

This is the reason why Lenskart started making some strategic partnerships and investments in companies like 6 over 6 and this enables them to do home visits for eye checkups.

Lenskart’s Both online & offline presence

Lenskart serves its customers not only online, but also offline, through their brick and mortar stores, their online ordering platforms, and booking appointments to have their eyes examined right at home.

Lenskart’s Google Ads strategy

Lenskart uses Google Ads to attract paid search traffic with keywords like eyeglasses, sunglasses, and glasses. It also uses Google Shopping ads to give users a direct view of their products. There are many more options, like display ads, video ads, and universal app download ads, which offer maximum exposure.

Lenskart’s Celebrity endorsement

The Lenskart brand has revolutionized eyewear in India, and now eyewear is associated with fashion rather than a remedy for poor eyesight. To achieve this, they partnered with a few celebrities known for being fashion conscious. The first celebrity endorsement was given to Bham by Katrina Kaif.

Peyush Bansal pitch on Shark tank India

On national television, the makers of ‘Shark Tank India’ left the audience and judges astonished when co-judge Peyush Bansal explained the details of his firm, Lenskart, to the other sharks. After describing how his firm was founded and how the production was organized, Bansal pitched his firm to the other sharks. After a short time, other judges joined in and asked several questions to the Lenskart co-founder.

Anupam Mittal (founder of Shaadi.com), Ghazal Alagh (co-founder of Mamaearth), and Vineeta Singh (founder of SUGAR Cosmetics) all returned the favour when Bansal took the stage to ask for a Rs 1 crore investment and one percent equity in the business he founded. After they began negotiating, they also took funny shots at one another as the banter progressed. Bansal shared a snippet of his pitch on social media in addition to thanking the makers and his Lenskart team.

Additionally, Piyush Bansal noted that 50% of the population needs spectacles, but only 1/4 has spectacles, so 40 crore Indians need spectacles, but none are available.

Mission vision of Lenskart

A child’s 80% of learning is done through vision, but in the world, around 23cr children need glasses but cannot afford them. Nearly half the people in India need glasses, but only a quarter have them. Around 40cr Indians need vision correction.

According to many studies, vision correction is one of the world’s biggest health concerns, causing an annual loss of 227 billion dollars. In India, one in three people can’t even see clearly. To solve this problem, he started Lenskart.

 Mission

The mission of Lenskart isn’t just to provide glasses to 50% of Indians but to become the Maruthi of eyewear in India. Just as Maruti has provided cars to Indians, they want to provide eyewear to Indians, Peyush spoke about three difficulties with vision.

The widespread lack of awareness of this issue, a child’s vision is not tested at school, no specific provision is made in the insurance policy for vision testing, how will people be able to find out about this issue, houses have TV screens, but they do not test their vision, and there are only forty thousand stores selling glasses in India.

Despite being quite small and controlled by few people, this industry is quite expensive to own. This is due to the Indians that the total cost of ownership of glasses is quite high.