Interview: Ramneek Khurana, co-founder, Lenskart

We at present do greater than half 1,000,000 eye check-ups and eyeglass dispatches per 30 days with our community of on-line, cell app, and over 700 omnichannel shops, says Khurana

Except for the $95 million it raised from personal fairness agency KKR, Lenskart has been investing and buying tech platforms (Tango Eye, Each day Pleasure), and beefing up its analytics workforce in a bid to scale up. Ramneek Khurana tells Sapna Nair that the eyewear firm is bullish about strengthening provide chain and tech ops to extend its capability to ship out glasses greater than tenfold.

The previous yr noticed many companies transfer on-line. How a lot of a problem was it for Lenskart, provided that touch-and-feel is an important cog within the eyewear trade?

The pandemic has been a recreation changer not only for the retail and manufacturing trade, however companies throughout. The shift in the direction of a digital ecosystem, which made individuals settle for the digital work and studying tradition as the brand new regular, led to a rise in display time. Our well-operated vertical provide chain mannequin allowed us to serve our clients with none hindrance. We may determine the important thing issues that customers confronted as they transitioned to the web medium to put orders throughout this era, and labored backwards on our tech options to deal with the identical. For example, eyewear sizes are usually not understood, in contrast to the dimensions of t-shirts or footwear. To unravel this, we launched a machine learning-based instrument whereby customers can take a selfie, and our algorithm throws up a choice of glasses which can be the suitable match for them.

Customers wish to get an actual really feel of how the eyewear appears on their face earlier than inserting the order. For that, we now have labored on augmented actuality know-how that provides the consumer the power to flip glasses on their face by simply giving entry to their machine digital camera. Moreover, customers can now see their prescriptions upfront after they log onto the Lenskart app. That is what we now have captured primarily based on their earlier buy or eye exams at any of the Lenskart touchpoints.

How a lot has your online-offline income share modified in the course of the pandemic? What would be the focus going forward?

We now have positioned ourselves as an omnichannel model proper for the reason that inception. With the pandemic, our on-line share has considerably grown. With the combination of our know-how and vertical provide chain, the variety of on-line clients has greater than doubled in comparison with the pre-pandemic interval. Strengthening each the channels will stay our focus space, however it will additionally rely on how the pandemic state of affairs unfolds.

Lenskart lately raised $95 million. The place will these funds be poured in?

A good portion of the efforts will majorly go in the direction of two areas: provide chain — we’re engaged on the biggest automated facility for eyewear manufacturing with the power to serve multi-million glasses per 30 days — and scaling up our technological developments.

What sort of tech developments are on the playing cards? You will have been strengthening your analytics workforce and constructing a tech hub in Hyderabad…

In our nation of over a billion, 600 million individuals want spectacles; globally, 4.5 billion individuals want imaginative and prescient correction. Out of those solely a fraction use imaginative and prescient correction because of lack of information, and the shortage of reasonably priced options. Lenskart was based to deal with this hole. We at present do greater than half 1,000,000 eye check-ups and eyeglass dispatches per 30 days with our community of on-line, mobile app, and over 700 omnichannel shops.

From a know-how standpoint, our work will proceed in three instructions: making the web shopping for expertise extra seamless utilizing pc imaginative and prescient, augmented actuality and machine studying; firming up our omnichannel capabilities by utilizing NFC and different applied sciences; and, lastly, strengthening our provide chain by constructing tech that’s able to transport out 10-times extra glasses than our present capability. Scaling this up persistently in order that customers get the identical expertise each time is our largest problem.

Which markets and retailer codecs will you prioritise as you develop your retail presence?

We now have launched extra expertise centres in Bengaluru, Pune in addition to different cities in India. We now have additionally launched shops in markets equivalent to Coimbatore, Jamshedpur, Trichy and Kochi. By way of prioritising, we’re enlargement within the Center East and Singapore this yr, strengthening each our on-line and offline retailer presence there. Moreover, we will probably be focussing on on-line development within the US market.

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