Consumer-tech major Lenskart’s shares debuted at 1.7 to 3% discount on Monday, took a 11.5% plunge in early trade, and sharply recouped to end in green. Nearly ₹5,593 crore worth of shares were traded, bulk of it in NSE (Rs 5,221.7 crore).
The initial public offering (IPO) price was Rs 420 at upper-band. The shares ended Monday marginally up, at ₹404.55 on NSE and at 403.30 at BSE. At peak, they gained nearly 3% — an intra-day swing of 14.5%.
Peyush Bansal, Co-Founder & CEO in a note to shareholders on Sunday said “We didn’t build Lenskart to reach a valuation. We built it to reach people — from the heart of Delhi to the smallest towns in the Northeast.” The firm had garnered more than 48 times bids in the high-voltage IPO that valued it at 235 times FY25 earnings.
“Lenskart’s expansion plans in AI-linked products and services, is factored in the valuations,” said an institutional investor. The firm operates 2,806 stores globally. While the global eyewear market, Rs 15,207 bn in FY25, is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4% by FY30, in India it is expected to grow at 13%.
It is a “market leader with omnichannel experience, newer markets along with expansion plans with technology at the helm,” noted Nirmal Bang. Rising myopia (50% urban youth), increasing urban population are growth drivers for Lenskart, while “unorganised competition and supply chain dependency on China imports (40%) are drags,” said another brokerage Deven Choksey.
Lenskart is the first to list among the recent string of unicorn IPOs, including brokerage Groww, ed-tech Physics Wallah and fintech Pine Labs. The Rs 6,000 crore issuance of e-commerce Meesho and the Rs 3,900 crore float of TPG-backed data-analytics firm Fractal.ai are two other unicorns awaiting IPO announcement near-term.
Non-Institutional Investors (NII) with investments above Rs10 lakh had placed bids more than 65.4 times in the Lenskart IPO. It raised ₹3,268.36 crore at ₹402 apiece from Government of Singapore (GIC) T Rowe Price, BlackRock, Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, Nomura and JP Morgan.
Two schemes of SBI Mutual Fund had invested Rs 100 crore and billionaire investor Radhakishan Damani, around Rs 90 crore, in a pre-IPO transaction at Rs 402 per share. Alpha Wave Ventures LP, Bay Capital Holdings Ltd, Chiratae Trust, IDG Ventures India Fund III LLC, Kariba Holdings, Kedaara Capital and MacRitchie Investments are among earlier investors.
Peyush Bansal, Neha Bansal, Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi, were among part-sellers from promoters. Schroders Capital, PI Opportunities Fund, Kedaara Capital and Alpha Wave had also offered shares.
Lenskart plans to use IPO proceeds to add stores, upgrade technology and cloud infrastructure, marketing and inorganic growth. Kotak Mahindra, Morgan Stanley India, Avendus Capital, Citigroup Global Markets, Axis Capital and Intensive Fiscal assisted the IPO.
Since 2021, six unicorns, including Lenskart, have raised above Rs 5,000 crore each from primary markets. Paytm (Rs18,300 crore), Swiggy (Rs11,330 crore) and Eternal (Rs9,375 crore) were the largest, followed by PB Fintech and Nykaa.