Exclusive: Lenskart raises nearly $20 Mn led by Peyush and Neha Bansal

Eyewear retailer Lenskart has raised nearly $20 million from its co-founders Peyush Bansal, Neha Bansal, Amit Choudhary and Sumeet Kapahi. This is the second investment in Lenskart by its co-founders in the last seven months.

The board at Lenskart has passed a special resolution to issue 695,875 CCPS at an issue price of Rs 2,300 each to raise Rs 160 crore or $19.12 million, its regulatory filing accessed from the Registrar of companies (ROC) shows.

Piyush Bansal led the round with Rs 70.70 crore while Neha Bansal put Rs 70.39 crore. Amit Choudhary and Sumeet Kapahi participated with Rs 9.60 crore and Rs 9.35 crore, respectively.

As mentioned above, this is the second instance where the co-founders invested in the company in less than a year. Piyush and Neha invested Rs 29.89 crore and Rs 29.77 crore, respectively, in December 2023 along with Choudhary and Kapahi.

The development comes soon after a $200 million secondary deal announced by Lenskart. Temasek and Fidelity Management & Research Company (FMR) solely invested in the secondary at a valuation of more than $5 billion.

Lenskart claims to have more than 2,500 stores of which approximately 2,000 are in India. While India accounts for nearly 60% of its revenue, the rest of the income was generated from international operations in countries such as Singapore, Dubai, the US, and Southeast Asia.

Despite funding winter, the Delhi-based company has raked in over $1 billion in the last 18 months. The continued interest of investors in the company is largely driven by its strong financial performance, unit economics and growth opportunities in overseas countries.

For the fiscal year ending in March 2023, Lenskart’s revenue from operations surged to Rs 3,788 crore from Rs 1,502 crore in FY22. The decent scale and controlled expenditure helped the company to reduce its losses by 37.3% to Rs 64 crore in FY23 from Rs 102 crore in FY22. The firm is yet to file its annual financial report for FY24.