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Lenskart raising Rs 1,645 crore led by Softbank Vision Fund

Experts say that Lenskart’s strength lies in building a strong franchise model for store expansion and great advertising across all channels.

Lenskart is raising Rs 1,645 crore ($231.42 million) in fresh funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF), according to the company’s RoC filings sourced from business signals platform paper.vc. The investment, which is part of the firm’s Series G round of financing, is estimated to give it a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion, said Jayraj Patel, analyst at paper.vc.

In September, the Faridabad-based eyewear retailer had raised close to Rs 400 crore from Kedaara Capital, fetching it the status of a unicorn. The latest financing takes its total fund tally to over $400 million.

Lenskart’s narrowed its losses by 76% to Rs 27.88 crore in the year to March 2019. Revenue from operations increased to Rs 474.28 crore in FY19 from Rs 292.35 crore in FY18. Total expenses of the firm, however, rose to Rs 514.15 crore in FY19 compared to Rs 428.97 crore in the previous year.

Founded in 2010 by Peyush Bansal, Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi, Lenskart claims to service over 3,000 customers per day currently from 30 customers a day initially. The company that follows an omni-channel business model and competes with firms like Titan and GKB Opticals has over 550 stores at present across the country.

The firm aims to open 500 more stores in the next two years, taking the total number of stores to nearly 2,000 within next five years, co-founder Chaudhary told a local magazine in a recent interview. Lenskart, which intends to go deeper into Tier-II cities and beyond, estimates about 50% of its new stores to come up in Tier-II and Tier-III cities.

To tap into Tier-III and Tier-IV markets, Lenskart has worked out a low-cost franchise model — Lenskart Lite, which generates monthly revenues of about Rs 4 lakh to Rs 6 lakh. Its regular franchise model stores brings Rs 8 lakh-10 lakh in revenues.

Experts say that Lenskart’s strength lies in building a strong franchise model for store expansion and great advertising across all channels.

“The SVF deal will allow the company to scale operations to more locations in small towns and overseas territories,” paper.vc’s Patel said.

SoftBank has invested through Cayman Islands-based SVF II Lightbulb, the filings showed.

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Source: Financial Express