Lenskart gets $100mn from ChrysCapital – Times of India

NEW DELHI : Lenskart has bagged a fresh $100 million in funding from private equity firm ChrysCapital. The investment includes a mix of primary and secondary share purchases and takes the startup’s total fund count to about $1. 6 billion. Lenskart said the financing will help fund expansion and growth plans.
At a time when flow of funding into startups has become selective and investors are taking time to close deals, Lenskart has managed to garner backing of ChrysCapital barely three months after raising $500 million from Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) at a valuation of $4. 5 billion, perhaps underlining the viability of its business model.
The ADIA investment was, however, largely secondary in nature. “We believe that with the help of technology, customer centricity, and big investments in supply chain and talent, we can eradicate the problem of vision correction. Eyewear as a lifestyle category is at a very early stage in its evolution, and there is a lot of opportunity to make glassesthat can uplift our quality of life significantly as seen in shoes, apparel and watches,” said Peyush Bansal, founder & CEO at Lenskart.
The Gurgaon-based omni-channel eyewear brand services 20 million customers and is expanding beyond India to cover the Middle East and parts of Asia. Rajiv Batra, senior VP at ChrysCapital, which has over $5 billion worth of assets under management across eight funds, said with the acquisition of Japanese D2C eyewear brand Owndays, Lenskart has an opportunity to expand across more than 10 Asian countries, in addition to India.