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Prescription eye-wear e-tailer Lenskart.com is looking to turn profitable, in 2017.
According to founder and CEO Peyush Bansal, the company is already “contribution margin positive” for fiscal 2016. This mean, at very early operational levels — which include direct channel expenses like cost of goods, payments and gateway charges — it is earning profits.
“By 2017, we should be EBITDA positive,” he told BusinessLine in an interview. The Faridabad-headquartered e-tailer is also looking at a 150 per cent increase in turnover to upwards of ₹200 crore by the end of this fiscal, against ₹80 crore last fiscal.
The domestic eye-wear market is estimated at ₹20,000 crore, with the organised segment accounting for around ₹2,000 crore. Lenskart is eyeing a 10 per cent market share in the organised segment.
According to Bansal, the e-tailer will invest ₹60 crore to expand capacities at its manufacturing facility at Okhla (Delhi), from the current 5,000 spectacles a day to 20,000.
The plant manufactures lenses. The company gets its frames contract manufactured from other parts of India, China, Korea and Italy. Compared to a regular optician who takes 20 minutes to make a pair of spectacles, Lenskart claims to make three units in 50 seconds, at 10 times more precision.
The company is also looking to ramp up its omni-channel presence, adding 250 brick-and-mortar stores every year. It has over 100 outlets at present operated on a franchisee model.
Customers can try out models in the outlets and place their orders online.
The off-line business is riding on the online one, with over 1,000 home appointments a day, said Bansal.
“We are really generating the trial and trust factor. In our view e-comm is beyond a desktop — it’s about building accessibility.”
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