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December 7, 2025
Gargi Sarkar, Inc42
7 December 2025
The past year has been nothing short of monumental for LensKart — from reporting another operationally profitable quarter in Q2 FY26 to making the public markets leap in November, and crossing a market capitalisation of INR 70,000 Cr despite a muted stock market debut.
A clear shift this year has been Lenskart’s effort to move beyond the image of a ‘basic D2C eyewear’ brand selling prescription glasses and sunglasses. The company is now working to reposition itself as a new-age tech brand.
Further, Lenskart is rethinking where and how its products are manufactured. Currently, around 20–25% of its frames are reportedly manufactured in India. The company is ramping up its domestic production. As a new manufacturing facility in Telangana is a work in progress, Lenskart intends to gradually shift most of its manufacturing operations from China to India.
In many ways, 2025 has been about scaling up for Lenskart, and as it embarks on a fresh journey as a publicly listed company, let’s take stock of the company in 2025 and where it might be headed in 2026.
Lenskart’s Smart Eyewear Bet
Lenskart began its smart eyewear journey last year with the launch of Phonic, its audio glasses. It later deepened its push into the segment by announcing a strategic investment in Ajna Lens, a Mumbai-based deeptech company that develops AI-powered XR glasses. Back then, Peyush Bansal described the move as the “next chapter” in Lenskart’s smart glasses journey.
Cut to December 2025, the company is all set to launch its AI camera smartglasses, B by Lenskart, by the end of this month.
What makes B by Lenskart noteworthy is that it isn’t being marketed as just another pair of smart glasses. The new eyewear features an integrated Sony camera that enables hands-free photo and video capture. The glasses come with a built-in AI assistant powered by Gemini 2.5 Live. They are designed to offer natural, conversational interactions and pack in a range of advanced features — from hands-free UPI payments and live translation to wellness insights and more.
What makes the move even more significant is Lenskart’s decision to open B by Lenskart to India’s developer ecosystem. By making its AI and camera technology accessible to consumer apps and independent developers, the company is enabling integrations across categories such as food delivery, entertainment, and fitness.
“By opening its AI smartglasses to third-party developers, Lenskart is moving from a one-time product-sale model to a platform ecosystem model. In the long run, this could unlock recurring revenue streams and higher margins,” said a product developer.
Besides, the company is aligning itself with a younger customer cohort, aided by affordability, style, and technology.
“That’s what seems to define their current strategy. Over time, they’ve also brought in elements of innovation like virtual try-ons, and any product, feature, or service that brings novelty and appeals to younger customers has become part of their brand approach,” said Devangshu Dutta, the founder of Third Eyesight.
Next, the timing couldn’t be better for Lenskart to place its bet on smart glasses. An IDC report reveals that despite a slowdown in smartwatch and earwear segments in the second half of 2025, smart glass shipments shot off more than 1,000% over the last year.
However, it’s not going to be smooth sailing from here.
At its core, Lenskart is still a consumer-facing company, and it needs new products to keep its revenue growing. But the competition is already heating up. Jio unveiled its own AI-powered smart glasses, Jio Frames, at Reliance Industries’ 48th annual general meeting. And of course, Meta continues to lead the global smart glasses market.
At this point, smart eyewear is a niche category, which comes with a hefty price tag.
“Unless cost drops dramatically, mass adoption is still a distant dream. As of now, the product will only attract early adopters and tech enthusiasts, rather than the mainstream consumer,” Dutta adds.
Lenskart’s Make In India Push
Lenskart is not only widening its product range but also ramping up its manufacturing. The company currently operates centralised manufacturing facilities in India (Bhiwadi in Rajasthan and Gurugram in Haryana), Singapore, and the UAE. It also has manufacturing operations in China.
Back home, Lenskart has also signed a non-binding MoU with the Government of Telangana for setting up a greenfield manufacturing facility for optical glasses. The proposed investment stands at INR 1,500 Cr and will be supported by certain incentives and assistance from the state government.
The new production facility is expected to strengthen Lenskart’s domestic manufacturing capabilities while reducing its exposure to foreign exchange fluctuations and import-related volatility.
However, the expansion comes with its own set of challenges. While the new manufacturing plant in Telangana is expected to strengthen Lenskart’s vertical integration, it will come with a hefty cost burden.
Profitability Still A Troubling Question
The cost structure is becoming increasingly important for Lenskart. Despite its headline-grabbing profitability, the company is still operating on fairly thin margins.
Lenskart reported a net profit of INR 297 Cr in FY25, a notable turnaround from a loss of INR 10 Cr in FY24. However, market analysts caution that the business’ core operations were unprofitable. It was largely “other income” or investment income that drove the FY25 bottom line.
“Though Lenskart has increased its revenue from INR 3,789 Cr in FY23 to INR 6,651 Cr in FY25, the company’s profitability has largely improved due to a rise in other income. While it reported a PAT of INR 297 Cr in FY25, a closer look shows that the profit was driven significantly by an increase in other income, which jumped to INR 356 Cr in FY25,” SimranJeet Singh Bhatia, senior research analyst for equity at Almondz Group.
The point of concern here is that Lenskart turned operationally profitable only after its market debut. Bhatia believes that at least three to four quarters of consecutive profitability will be needed to prove the company’s underlying strength.
However, making matters worse are the company’s climbing expenses, which stood at INR 1,980.3 Cr in Q2 FY26, up 18.5% YoY.
What Lies Ahead?
The year was equally sour for the eyewear major. While its IPO generated significant buzz and saw strong subscription levels, its market debut turned out to be a muted affair.
At the upper end of its INR 382 to INR 402 IPO price band, the public issue implied a price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple of roughly 235–238 times its FY25 profits, placing it among the most expensive consumer tech listings in India.
On its first day of trading, Lenskart Solutions Ltd. was listed on the NSE at INR 395 per share, a discount of 1.74% to the issue price of INR 402. The stock, however, fell close to 9% shortly thereafter. On the BSE, it debuted at INR 390, marking a discount of nearly 3%.
After the IPO, Bhatia adds, the biggest concern surrounding Lenskart is the store-level unit economics, particularly because a significant share of the IPO proceeds is being directed toward expanding its company-owned, company-operated store network.
Entering the new year as a public company, Lenskart will have to prove that its scale-up plans are justified and that it has greater control over its balance sheet. 2026 will be a critical juncture for the company, as the next three to four quarters will be closely watched for signs of sustainable growth, improved margins, and stronger operational discipline.
[Edited by Shishir Parasher]
(Published in Inc42)
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September 24, 2025
Shabori Das & Sagar Malviya, Economic Times
Bengaluru/Mumbai, 24 September 2025
Chinese fast-fashion platform Shein plans to triple the number of launches in India and shrink its design-to-launch timeline by a third to deepen its push into an increasingly competitive market, a top official said.
The company, which re-entered India through a partnership with Reliance Retail in February this year, said it is overhauling its supply chain to enable faster turnaround times. To achieve this, it has moved away from large-scale manufacturing hubs to smaller production lines with each line focused on creating a single new design daily.
“Our current timelines, measured from ‘thought to site’, stand at 46 days. We are targeting 30 days,” said Vineeth Nair, chief executive of Reliance’s fashion platform Ajio that steers Shein in India. “We currently deliver 320 styles a day – about 10,000 a month – and plan to scale that to over 30,000 styles monthly in the coming months,” he told ET.
Speaking about the speed of manufacturing, Nair said, “We quantify our options in terms of production lines, with each line optimised to deliver one design option per day, rather than factories. Some of our large production units have been repurposed into multiple lines.”
Shein first launched in India in 2018 with its own online shop. However, the app was banned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) along with TikTok, WeChat and over 55 other Chinese apps.
One of the primary issues and controversies surrounding Shein’s India operations was the use of the consumer data by the Chinese apparel retailer.
Under the current partnership model, Reliance Retail is operating Shein under licensing agreement and ensures complete customer data ownership as per the company.
Unlike international markets, Shein India products are made in India.
“It’s still early days – just about three months since we introduced Shein to the India Gen Z,” Nair said. “And we are still in the process of adding multiple products, which we intend to do in the next few months.”
He said the brand is witnessing two million daily average users, dominated by 21-year-old women who account for 62% of the traffic.
Shein, the world’s biggest ecommerce-centred fashion retailer, however, may find it hard to replicate its global success in India, according to Devangshu Dutta, founder of retail consulting firm Third Eyesight.
“Shein’s edge internationally has been its speed of dropping its products, and the width of its product category. The India model is not the same. The India model of fashion is slower, and the product category width is not as large,” he noted. “Hence, the brand will in all probability end up competing with the already established market like Myntra, Zudio and the likes.”
(Published in Economic Times)
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May 23, 2025
By Kunal Purohit and Ananya Bhattacharya, Rest of World
Mumbai, India, 23 May 2025
Online retail continues to elude India’s richest man.
The Shein India app, launched by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail in partnership with the Chinese fast-fashion giant, has struggled to gain traction in a market where Amazon and Walmart have been fighting neck-to-neck for nearly a decade. Downloads for Shein India nosedived from 50,000 a day shortly after its launch in early February to 3,311 in early April, according to AppMagic, a U.S.-based app performance tracker.
In April, when U.S. tariffs hit China, the app saw renewed interest as it was in the news, but experts are unclear on whether this growth is sustainable.
“Unlike earlier times, now … [the] market is saturated with multiple options and offers, and user interest can quickly dwindle,” Yugal Joshi, partner at global research firm Everest Group, told Rest of World.
Kushal Bhatnagar of Indian consulting firm Redseer, however, sees the late-April spike as a healthy sign, given that Reliance has yet to run paid marketing campaigns for Shein.
Reliance Retail declined to respond to Rest of World’s queries about its partnership with Shein.
Reliance launched Shein for India five years after the original Shein app was banned in the country over border tensions with China. But the Shein that has returned is entirely separate from Shein’s global platform: Rather than selling made-in-China clothes and accessories directly to consumers, Shein now operates as a technology partner, while Reliance Retail handles the heavy lifting — from sourcing and manufacturing to distribution. All consumer data is managed by the Indian company.
The partnership is part of Ambani’s broader effort to overhaul his retail business, whose valuation fell to $50 billion in 2025 from $125 billion in 2022. Although the company has made a push into digital platforms like JioMart, Ajio, and most recently Shein India, the bulk of its retail revenue still comes from its 18,000 physical stores.
Lagging behind Amazon and Walmart-backed Flipkart, which together control nearly 60% of India’s e-commerce market, Reliance has spent years trying to break into the sector. Between 2020 and 2025, Ambani’s group acquired majority stakes in companies spanning digital services, online pharmaceuticals, and quick commerce. But the investments have yet to position Reliance as a serious challenger to Amazon and Flipkart.
Analysts say the Indian behemoth hopes to leverage Shein’s artificial intelligence-powered trendspotting and automated inventory systems to pursue an ambitious goal: capturing a major share of India’s e-commerce market, projected to hit $345 billion by 2030.
According to Kaustav Sengupta, director of insights at VisionNxt, an Indian government-funded initiative that uses AI to forecast fashion trends, such a model is likely to make good use of Reliance’s humongous customer data sets: more than 476 million subscribers for its Jio telecom brand, 300 million users for e-commerce platform JioMart, and 452 million subscribers for its news and entertainment portfolio, consisting of 63 channels, a streaming service, and digital news outlets.
“With these data points, Reliance wants to now sell fashion products, so all it needs is a system where it can feed all these data points,” Sengupta told Rest of World. He said the model would be able to predict best-selling products and suggest the right prices for them.
The original Shein app uses AI-driven models for intelligent warehousing and to spot customer trends before manufacturing a new product. It scales the manufacturing up or tweaks the designs based on the feedback. At any given time, the Shein website has a catalogue of more than 600,000 items. Its Indian iteration does not match up, according to reviews on the Google Play store. Several customer reviews for Reliance’s Shein app are critical of higher prices and reduced options. The app’s rating hovered at 2 out of 5 until February; in May, it climbed to 4.4, but reviews were still a mixed bag.
Reviews of the Indian app highlight the disparity with Shein’s global version, criticizing higher prices and a reduced selection of categories and styles.
As of April 25, Reliance Retail said only 12,000 products were live on Shein India, a stark contrast to the 600,000 items available on Shein’s global platforms. While Shein is reportedly set to debut on the London Stock Exchange this year, Ambani’s years-old promise to take Reliance Retail public remains unfulfilled.
Reliance Retail, which accounts for around 30% of the conglomerate’s overall business, is facing a slowdown in annual growth. Its sales rose just 7.9% in the fiscal year ending March 2025, down from 17.8% the previous year. Meanwhile, shares of rival Tata Group’s retail and fashion arm, Trent, have soared by 133%.
“Reliance would have looked at reviving that momentum and riding on it, while for Shein, adding India back on its portfolio of markets could be a plus point before its proposed public listing,” Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, a brand management consultancy that has worked with various global e-commerce brands including Ikea, told Rest of World.
A Reliance Retail official privy to information about its fast fashion expansion plans told Rest of World the partnership with Shein also hinges on global manufacturing ambitions as the Chinese company is trying to “source its products from other countries like India” to meet the “additional demand that is coming from newer markets.” Reliance Retail has tapped a network of small and midsize Indian manufacturers to locally source products, and its subsidiary Nextgen Fast Fashion Limited is leading the charge. “We need to first scale up our domestic manufacturing, before our partnership starts manufacturing for global markets. Let us see how that goes, first,” the official said, requesting anonymity as he is not authorized to share this information publicly.
India’s Gen Z population is at 377 million and counting, and their spending power is set to surpass $2 trillion by 2035, according to a 2024 report by Boston Consulting Group. Every fast-fashion retailer wants to capture this market, but it “is very new even for Reliance,” Rimjim Deka, founder of Indian fast-fashion platform Littlebox, told Rest of World.
Deka said smaller brands like hers “just see [a trend] and implement it,” which could take a large conglomerate months to do, by which time the trend may have lost relevance.
Reliance’s previous attempts to attract young shoppers with clothing brands like Foundry and Yousta failed to find much success. Anandita Bhuyan, who works in trend forecasting and product creation for fast-fashion clients like H&M and Myntra, told Rest of World the company has struggled to effectively leverage consumer data and target India’s youth.
According to the Reliance Retail official, the company is confident that if “there are 10 existing brands, the 11th brand will also get picked up as long as there is value and there is fashion.”
“Shein already has a recall among the youth. It gives us yet another brand in our portfolio through which we can cater to the youth,” the official said.
Shein was built in China on the back of more than 5,400 micro manufacturers — a scattered and loosely organized network of small and midsize factories.
In January this year, on a visit to China, Deka met with manufacturers working for Shein and Temu. On the outskirts of Guangzhou, Deka saw factories set up in areas that appeared residential, with “women sitting inside houses” making clothes.
“The tech is built in a way that somebody sitting there is able to see that, okay, next 15 days or next one month, how much I should be making … that is the kind of integration they have done,” Deka said.
Deka told Rest of World this model is easier to replicate at a smaller scale. “Me, coming from [the] supply chain industry, I understand that it is much easier for a brand like us because we are at a very smaller scale. We can still go to those people, we can still build it in a very unorganized way and then pull it off,” she said. Her company’s annual net revenue is 750 million Indian rupees ($8.6 million).
“[But] somebody like Reliance, they just cannot go haphazard here. … It has to be always organized,” Deka said.
Shein moved its headquarters to Singapore sometime between late 2021 and early 2022, a strategic departure to distance itself from its Chinese origins and facilitate hassle-free international expansion amid the U.S.-China trade war.
India is part of Shein’s wider strategy to diversify its supply chain — one that also includes a newly leased warehouse near Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, and efforts to establish alternative manufacturing hubs in Brazil and Turkey.
But in India, Reliance needs Shein as much as Shein needs Reliance for its global pivot. According to Bloomberg, Reliance Retail is focusing on creating leaner operations to weather a wider consumption slump in the Indian economy.
“It remains to be seen whether the Reliance-Shein combine can deliver on the brand’s promise with a wide range of products, fast and on-trend,” Dutta said. “In the years that Shein has been absent, the Indian market has evolved further, competition has intensified, and past goodwill is not enough to provide sales momentum.”
Kunal Purohit is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai, India.
Ananya Bhattacharya is a reporter for Rest of World covering South Asia’s tech scene. She is based in Mumbai, India.
(Published in Rest of World)
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February 23, 2025
Chitra Narayanan, BusinessLine
New Delhi, 23 February 2025
India’s formidable array of craft traditions got full play at the just concluded Bharat Tex 2025, the mega textile trade show in New Delhi that showcased the best of Indian weaves to the world. But if there was one theme that dominated this year’s textile extravaganza, aimed at generating more exports, it was the focus on zero-waste fashions and upcycling. Everywhere the eye could see were standees and gigantic posters pushing the message of conscious consumption and sustainability — be it regenerative cotton, innovative models of textile waste collection, or eco-friendly fibres.
Taking centre stage at one of the halls at Bharat Mandapam, the venue, was a section that showcased age-old traditional arts like rafugari (creative darning or artistic mending), patchwork quilts and toys, and chindi durries (the art of weaving rugs and carpets with waste).
Juxtaposed against these ethnic ways of upcycling waste were the modern works of startups that rose to the textile ministry’s grand innovation challenge to work with discarded materials. From microbial dyes that are non-polluting to flowing fashionable lehengas created out of textile waste, the startups showed that a lot can be done in this area. The ministry had challenges in three more segments — jute, silk and wool.
Some takeaways from a walk-through of the textile trade show:
Closing the loop
The fashion and textile industry generates enormous waste. How to cut down on this was a subject of much deliberation and showcases. There were a lot of good ideas on display, showing that a fair amount of work has been done with fibres (bamboo, banana, flax), as well as creativity and ingenuity in weaves and finished garments.
As Devangshu Dutta, Chief Executive of the consultancy Third Eyesight, points out, due credit must be given for the good work going into generating solutions that will reduce waste, be it textiles that are reprocessed and reused as yarn, or refashioned garments or reloved apparel. But, as he adds, on the other hand we have brands that are constantly looking to grow their business and there is a race to the bottom in terms of price. The relaunch of fast fashion retailer Shein in India is sending conflicting signals. “The basic engine is pumping out more and more products, and that has to be tackled,” he says, pointing to the competing forces at work.
The source of hope, he says, is the fact that the young are a bit more conservative about how they consume and what they consume.
Sandip Ghose, CEO of MP Birla Group, which has one of the oldest jute companies in India, was among the visitors at Bharat Tex. “As an industry insider, what I found good at Bharat Tex was that quite a bit of research seems to be on, both for finished fabric and for weaving. There was a lot of work on making jute look aesthetic. There were some vanity projects like tea leaves packed in jute bags. But the challenge is in two areas — commercialisation, and scaling up of these ideas,” he says.
He rues that the jute sector has not taken advantage of the production-linked incentive scheme at a time when the world is looking for eco-friendly and biodegradable textiles. “A tripartite partnership between the Centre (Niti Aayog and textile ministry), State government, and industry would address the issue of industry’s dependence on subsidies, labour issues and exports,” he says, adding that if India is looking at textiles as a major export area, jute is an option that has been missed.
Spinning into luxury
A clear trend evident from a tour of some of the apparel and home textile pavilions is the move towards premiumisation, similar to what is visible in other sectors, noticeably FMCG.
Talking to the manufacturers, especially those focused on the domestic market, the story one heard was that consumption had slowed in the mass segment, but was reassuringly strong in the premium segment.
Several players were also moving into the luxury and uber luxury segments. Both myTrident and Welspun had striking luxury collections.
Another trend visible in the home textiles section was the use of celebrity designers — myTrident’s eye-catching collection by resort-wear designers Shivan-Narresh; and Welspun’s beautiful sets from Kate Shand and Payal Singhal.
“When the economy suffers, it is the poor and middle class who cut down. There is no pressure to reduce consumption at the upper levels, and companies will try to tap into demand that is recession-proof,” says Dutta, explaining the push towards luxury by textile manufacturers.
New trade routes?
Export houses seemed reasonably happy with the buyer interest. Some mentioned that it was interesting to see buyers from Russia at the fair. However, for those supplying to US entities and Western Europe, the buyer interest from Russia may not translate into deals, given the risk of sanctions they could face.
To sum up, it was a fairly good showcase of India’s textile prowess to the world, but whether it will ring in more export orders is debatable as many of the problems and challenges the sector faces were swept under the carpet.
(Published in BusinessLine)
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December 4, 2024
Sagar Malviya, Economic Times
4 December 2024
Demand for sportswear from running shoes to joggers and yoga mats slowed down for leading firms such as Puma, Adidas, Nike, Skechers and Asics, halting their sprint since the easing of the Covid-19 pandemic when they doubled their sales in two years.
Sportswear firms have reported 1-25% year-on-year increase for 2023-24, down from 35-85% increase for the previous financial year, according to the latest regulatory filings. While demand for fitness wear and sports equipment for disciplines other than cricket grew as people prioritised health with the onset of Covid-19, consumers cut back on discretionary spends across categories over the past six to eight quarters.
Experts said companies capitalised on the popularity of more casual styles in the wake of the pandemic, a trend that has subsided now although people are more health conscious than ever. A broader slowdown, especially in cities, hurt premium categories including sportswear, which are completely dominated by global players.
“Sportswear or footwear has a slower replacement cycle than apparel and lifestyle products. Also, there is a distinct slowdown as it all comes down to income growth versus inflation. So, a longer term potential still remains for the segment but there is a short-term consumption stress,” said Devangshu Dutta, founder of retail consulting firm Third Eyesight.
With a population of 1.4 billion, India is among the fastest growing and largest international markets for footwear companies and over the years companies such as Under Armour, Asics and Skechers have expanded aggressively in the country.
Puma India managing director Karthik Balagopalan said the category has outpaced market growth with mid to high single digit growth rates even as subdued demand has lagged expectations.
“When it comes to health and fitness, consumers continue to spend on performance products and our sports-first strategy also leans towards that. Our ambition continues to grow at or be above market CAGR (compound annual growth rate) over the mid-term, and we think we are in a good place with our back-end infrastructure, our product portfolio and pipeline, BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) readiness and our best-in-class team, who will continue to cement and retain our lead on competition,” he said.
In October, Foot Locker entered India through a long-term licensing agreement with Metro Brands, which will own and operate stores, while Nykaa Fashion will be its exclusive e-commerce partner.
However, there are challenges. In August this year, the government made it mandatory for footwear companies to obtain BIS certification for more than a dozen footwear products including sports brands. This impacted sales even last year as BIS had not issued licences to several foreign brands whose products were manufactured outside India, which in turn, forced brands to cut down on supplies.
American footwear firm Skechers said in its last earnings call that it had been growing exceptionally well in India for several years but there was a bit of an anomaly in part because of some of the regulatory changes that it had not yet fully responded to.
“We continue to work closely with both our India team and regulators to further advance our local sourcing strategy. We are seeing positive trends and remain optimistic about the progress in this important market. We see tremendous opportunity, not only in our lifestyle business, but also in performance,” Skechers chief operating officer David Weinberg told analysts.
(Published in Economic Times)
