News: ADIA invests $500 million in Lenskart

Funding & Investment

ADIA invests $500 million in Lenskart

The investment will be an extension to the company's 2021 funding round and will allow the startup to expand its offerings and enter international markets
ADIA invests $500 million in Lenskart

Indian eyewear retailer Lenskart has announced it will raise $500 million from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) in a definitive agreement.

The deal comes as the startup looks to scale up its offerings and enter new international markets. 

ADIA's investment is an extension of the company's 2021 funding round and includes the secondary purchase of shares from some early backers of the eyewear retailer. Lenskart has raised a total of $1.5 billion in primary and secondary raises to date, according to data intelligence platform Tracxn.

Founded in 2009, Lenskart has quickly become one of the largest eyewear players in India, selling eyeglasses, sunglasses, contact lenses and other eyewear accessories.

The startup has operations in India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, selling its products both online and through over 2,000 stores. As of now, three-fourths of these stores are in India, but the company has plans to expand further.

"We are opening more than seven stores a week and plan to manufacture 20 million pairs of glasses next year," said Lenskart's CEO Peyush Bansal. "The next phase at Lenskart is a journey of 10 to 100 where we are focusing on building a diverse culture that enables innovation and execution at scale while solving a large bottleneck hindering high-quality vision for all."

With hundreds of millions of Indians needing vision correction, Bansal believes that the company will continue to scale its operations in India and existing international markets where it has operations because these regions remain highly underserved. "I hope we can continue to work hard with the same level of humility and dedication and transform the lives of a billion people eventually," he said.

Lenskart's backers include SoftBank and Alpha Wave Global.

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Topics: Funding & Investment, Entrepreneurship

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