Lenskart and Owndays Join Forces To Boost Eyewear Business Across 13 Asian Markets The two companies are merging to build a large omni-channel eyewear business that would permeate through India, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan
By Soumya Duggal •
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Indian prescription glasses company Lenskart and Japanese D2C eyewear brand Owndays have announced a merger to build a large omni-channel eyewear business across 13 markets in Asia, including India, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan.
Owndays co-founders, CEO Shuji Tanaka and COO Take Umiyama, will continue to be shareholders and lead the management team of Owndays Inc., which will continue to operate as a separate brand. The current major shareholders of Owndays, L Catterton Asia and Mitsui & Co., Principal Investments, will exit their positions to Lenskart.
LENSKART with its 300 people engineering team, estimated to scale up to 500 people in FY23, will help build a stronger online and omni experience for OWNDAYS, said a statement. LENSKART has also been investing hundreds of million dollars in deeper supply chain integration and automation which will now be leveraged by both the brands to further enhance customer proposition and unit economics, added the statement.
"I have known Shuji-san and Take-san for over five years and have been an admirer of the disruptive brand and customer experience they have built with OWNDAYS. To bring about a revolutionary change such as the one the world needs in eyewear, we need to work with like-minded and complementary founders. I see LENSKART and OWNDAYS sharing the same set of values centered around enriching customers' lives, caring for people in our communities, as well as continuous learning, and we also have very complementary skill sets. There is much we can achieve together which will be greater than the sum of its parts," said Peyush Bansal, co-founder and group CEO, Lenskart.
"I believe digital transformation is the key to our next phase of growth in the post-pandemic operating environment and I am excited to partner with LENSKART, which has deep expertise and intellectual capital in the information technology field. We envision that the combination of Owndays and Lenskart will bring about an abundance of innovation that will further revolutionize the eyewear industry to the benefit of people across the world," said Owndays founder and CEO Shuji Tanaka.
Founded in 2010, tech-enabled start-up LENSKART claims to bethe largest eyewear brand in India. The company claims to ships over 10 million pairs of eyewear every year and have over 20 million app downloads, 300 home eye test representatives as well as over 1,100 stores across India, Singapore, and Dubai. Lenskart grew by 65% year-on-year in 2021 and is on track to grow by another over 50 per cent in 2022, stated the company.
