E-commerce veteran & Lenskart Founder & CEO, Mr. Peyush Bansal delivered the most informative & vibrant Live Interactive WEBINAR on ‘The Lenskart Journey’ at Asian School of Business (ASB) on Friday, 14th August 2020 at 11:00 am for all BBA & BCA students as part of its “Leadership & Entrepreneurial Aspiration Development (LEAD) Program”.
Mr. Peyush Bansal is a veteran in the e-commerce space and founded Lenskart in the year 2010. Lenskart envisions to solve India’s eye care problem and redefine the complex eyewear category with a hybrid model of both online and a click and mortar presence. The company’s focus on local manufacturing backed by cutting-edge technology enables consumers to get high quality, affordable and trendy eyewear.
Today, Lenskart stands as a top Indian optical prescription eyewear retail chain. As of September 2019, Lenskart had over 500 stores in 70 cities in India. The company had a valuation of $1.5 billion by Dec 2019 after Softbank invested around $275 million. In 2020 Lenskart generated total revenue of Rs.1000 cr. plus. Its manufacturing facility in Delhi manufactures 300,000 glasses a month. Besides, Lenskart also has a factory in Zhengzhou (China) which manufactures about 50% of the production.
A key initiative of Asian Education Group (AEG) – considered as the largest centre for professional media, IT, law, management, fashion & hospitality education in Asia with world-class facilities – the webinar was followed by a lively Q&A Session with the honoured guest.
Conducted under the aegis of its “Leadership & Entrepreneurial Aspiration Development (LEAD) Program”, the power-packed session commenced with a welcome note, followed by a brief introduction of the honoured guest by Dr. Supriya Srivastava on behalf of the AEG family. Thereafter, Mr. Peyush Bansal took centre stage.
Mr. Peyush Bansal started his session by first thanking the AEG Family for having invited him for this talk with the new batch of ABS PGDM students and then straightaway got on to the topic of his webinar, viz., ‘The Lenskart Journey’. He opened his talk by stating that, “his journey is basically a story of some right people coming together at the right time and clicking well around a central social cause.”
Going back in time, Mr. Peyush Bansal recounted the time when he came back to India after quitting his quite lucrative job at Microsoft Corporation in the USA. He said that although it was a great experience working at Microsoft, he “wanted to do something more revolutionary in his life” and hence undertook the risk of returning back to India. Back here, he “set-up his first office in a car garage with some good people.” He did not start with Lenskart but with technology and internet-based innovations whereby he founded India’s first online campus classifieds portal, Searchmycampus.com in 2007 with a view to help students find a house near their college campus. Commenting on this initiative, Mr. Bansal observed that “If you are creating value, things fall in place.” Thus, between 2008-2011 Searchmycampus.com was received well and his office strength grew from 14 to 30 good people and he was joined by Mr. Amit, a BIT-Mesra alumni, who went on to become the co-founder of Lenskart.
Around that time, he had started working with small retail setups in the US — selling jewellery, cosmetics, eyewear etc. — who wanted to expand their online presence in India. His expertise lies in setting up new business initiatives and taking them to heights of success. With sufficient success in the domain of e-markets, Valyoo Technologies came into existence in 2008 and finally the business model of Lenskart.com was laid out in November 2010.
Mr. Peyush Bansal shared that all along his entrepreneurial endeavor so far, he wanted to use technology to solve people’s problems and it is during this time that he came to know of the huge “vision problem” that was affecting a major chunk of India’s population. Analyzing further, he realized that it was quite a big problem and there was an acute absence of quality service in terms of attending to the requirements of the consumers related to eye-tests, frame checking, and buying/delivery of spectacles. It is here that Mr. Bansal and his team crafted a big impact with the help of technology and achieved phenomenal consumer satisfaction level by way of direct manufacturing of glasses for specs, to eye tests at home, to virtual trial of frames, to buy online or offline options, to money back guarantees, and so on. According to him, all along his team concentrated on solving the problems of the consumers and offered them solutions to the best of their abilities. Thus it is that, the company has witnessed a 200 per cent YoY growth in the last 2 years.
Speaking about the key takeaways of his entrepreneurial experiences he said, “If you wish to make just money out of an entrepreneurship, you won’t go far. But, if you identify a problem and work for its solution, you can definitely make a big difference.” Delivering the key mantras of entrepreneurial success, he suggested, “Identify a cause, stay grounded, and find great people and grow with them.”
Then, Mr. Peyush Bansal opened the session for questions from the eager students. As expected, there was a series of questions put forward by students on his life and experiences and the topic of entrepreneurship. The much experienced guest speaker answered them all most authoritatively and to the utmost satisfaction of all participants.
Once done, this most informative & vibrant Live Interactive WEBINAR session with the E-commerce veteran & Lenskart Founder & CEO, Mr. Peyush Bansal came to an end.