Lenskart in $400 million deal to create Asian eyewear giant

Jun 30, 2022

[ad_1]

NEW DELHI: Lenskart is shopping for a majority stake in Japan’s Owndays Inc. in a deal that may create one among Asia’s largest on-line retailers of eyewear.
The Indian startup backed by SoftBank Group Corp. has agreed to purchase Owndays shares held by L Catterton Asia and Mitsui & Co. Principal Investments, the businesses mentioned in a press release. The deal values the Japanese chain at about $400 million, an individual accustomed to the transaction mentioned, asking to stay nameless discussing an undisclosed element. Owndays will function as a separate model led by co-founders Shuji Tanaka and Take Umiyama, however goal the premium section, whereas Lenskart focuses on the center and mass market segments, they mentioned.
Lenskart will personal a majority stake in Owndays however the deal is designed as a merger, Lenskart mentioned. A spokesman declined to touch upon the dimensions of the deal.
The transfer will create a retail big with operations in additional than a dozen markets from India and Japan to Southeast Asia. Lenskart, which makes use of expertise and provide chain automation to immediately promote eyewear to shoppers, will lean on Owndays to broaden its presence in bodily retail.
“About 4.5 billion folks globe-wide must put on prescription glasses however solely half of them do,” mentioned Peyush Bansal, Lenskart’s 38-year-old co-founder and chief government officer. “We’re seeing a $50 billion to $100 billion alternative and an actual likelihood to construct an Amazon for eyewear.”
Lenskart ought to attain profitability when it hits $400 million in gross sales within the 12 months ending March 2023, Bansal estimated. The 2 corporations mission mixed gross sales of $650 million in that interval, he mentioned. His startup, which was based in 2010 and backed by Falcon Edge Capital, KKR & Co., Temasek Holdings Pte and PremjiInvest, grew 65% final 12 months and is projected to surpass that this 12 months, Bansal mentioned on a video name.
Bansal graduated in engineering from McGill College in Montreal and labored at Microsoft Corp.’s headquarters earlier than returning to India. He co-founded Lenskart Options Pvt in 2010 outdoors New Delhi with three others he met on LinkedIn.
It’s since grown into the nation’s largest optical model, transport over 10 million pairs of eyewear yearly, providing facial analysis-driven suggestions on its cell app and residential imaginative and prescient exams.
Tokyo-headquartered Owndays was based in 1989 and opened its first abroad shops in 2013. It at the moment operates 460 shops in a dozen nations in addition to Japan, promoting over 2.5 million pairs of glasses yearly. L Catterton and Mitsui acquired Owndays in November 2018 for an undisclosed sum.
L Catterton was shaped as a partnership between Catterton, luxurious items model LVMH and Groupe Arnault. Its Asian arm had been mulling a sale of the Japanese chain for greater than a 12 months. At one level, Owndays’s house owners had been in unique negotiations with personal fairness corporations Longreach Group and Navis Capital, Bloomberg Information has reported.
In June, it offered $360 million value of minority pursuits to accounts managed by Hamilton Lane and different institutional buyers, a transfer that raised capital for the Asia unit to be redeployed in new investments.
A public itemizing for the newly enlarged Lenskart is no less than 36 months away, Bansal mentioned. The corporate is now constructing what it says is the world’s largest eyewear manufacturing plant northwest of Delhi. The $150 million manufacturing facility will ship 50 million pairs of eyewear yearly, Bansal mentioned.
“Digital transformation is the important thing to our subsequent part of development within the post-pandemic working setting,” Owndays co-founder Tanaka mentioned within the joint assertion.



[ad_2]