Titan’s eyewear division, Titan Eyeplus, is sharpening its focus on the smart eyewear category with the youth segment in mind to increase market share, as new-age competitors like Lenskart have established a leadership position in this space.
“We are positioning our Fastrack brand to address the youth segment. We have done it in watches and we are doing this in eyewear as well. This segment is very important to us,” Titan Eyeplus CEO Saumen Bhaumik told FE.
Titan has to gear up to face competition in the eyewear segment as its market share is around 5% compared to 25% of Lenskart. The eyewear segment is hugely fragmented, with around 70% market share in the hands of unorganised players.
Talking about competition, Bhaumik said, “How long can they give discounts? This is the third year since we stopped deep discounts or sales. We used to do one-plus-one offers earlier but slowly realised that is not who we are.”
On the focus ahead, Bhaumik said, “Smart sunglasses is probably the next thing that is going to happen. We’ve already received very positive response from the few thousand units we’ve sold. Sunglasses will remain a priority.”
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He said the company will set up its own eyewear stores in Dubai and the Gulf Cooperation Council regions. The aim is to have about two stores in Dubai in FY23. In the domestic market, Titan’s eyewear category has 824 exclusive outlets, which will increase to 850 by month-end. The company is poised to reach its target of having 1,000 stores the by the end of this fiscal. This is roughly in line with what Lenskart has chalked out for itself. Titan, however, has partnerships with about 7,000 other stores where the company’s eyewear is available.
Titan will continue to focus on online as well as offline play. Of the `517 crore revenue it reported in FY22, nearly 94% came from physical stores. In FY22, the eyecare unit had revenue of `517 crore and posted a profit of `50 crore. The company’s revenue accounted for roughly 2% of Titan’s total revenue of `27,456 crore during the year.
Titan Eyeplus has an annual production capacity of close to two million lenses and one million frames. Last year, it manufactured about 0.35-0.4 million frames and the company plans to double that output this year, almost utilising its plants’ full capacity.
Bhaumik said his division also sources frames from an Asian country outside of China and India but did not specify the region. For context, Lenskart has an annual production capacity of about 50 million pairs of eyewear, according to several reports.
Currently at Titan Eyeplus, prescription eyewear accounts for 90% of its entire product mix, while sunglasses take up the rest. Bhaumik said while the split will remain similar going forward, there will be an increased focus on sunglasses.