Lenskart recovers from tepid open to close first day slightly above IPO price | TechCrunch

Lenskart shares recovered after a soft start to finish slightly above the offer price on Monday, following the Indian eyewear retailer’s ₹72.8 billion ($821 million) IPO that sold out within hours but stirred debate over its valuation.

The stock opened at ₹395, below the IPO price of ₹402, and fell as much as 11% to ₹356.10 during the session before recovering to close at ₹404.55. The closing price valued Lenskart at about ₹702 billion (around $8 billion). The IPO was heavily oversubscribed with bids coming in at about 28 times the shares available, led primarily by institutional investors.

Lenskart’s pitch to investors is that its vertically integrated model — where it controls everything from manufacturing to retail stores — can outpace legacy optical chains and online rivals. But the 15-year-old company faces competition across price points from Titan Eye+ to new direct-to-consumer players, raising questions about how quickly it can scale profitably in India and overseas.

The company reported a profit in the fiscal year 2025 (which ended in March), with revenue rising 23% year-over-year to ₹66.53 billion (about $750 million). Net profit came in at ₹2.97 billion (around $33 million), boosted by a ₹1.67 billion (about $19 million) accounting gain (not actual cash) linked to its acquisition of Owndays. Excluding that one-time item, the company’s core profit stood at ₹1.30 billion, or roughly $15 million.

The company had sought a valuation of ₹700 billion — around $7.9 billion — at the top end of the IPO price range, placing it among the most richly valued of India’s new-age consumer brands, alongside firms such as Honasa and BlueStone. The valuation represents a more than 60% jump from the roughly $5 billion level at which Lenskart shares traded hands in a secondary share sale last June involving late-stage backers Fidelity and Temasek. Fidelity later marked up Lenskart’s valuation by 12% to $5.6 billion in November last year.

The proposed valuation implied about 230 times Lenskart’s core net profit and roughly 10 times its revenue, fueling debate among retail investors and on social media. DSP Asset Managers, which invested in the company ahead of the listing, defended the deal the valuation, despite acknowledging it was “expensive,” saying in a post responding to the criticism that the business remains “strong and scalable.”

Chief Executive Peyush Bansal, who has gained wider public recognition as a judge on Shark Tank India, said the issue was “fairly priced,” citing feedback from institutional investors.

“We didn’t build Lenskart to reach a valuation,” he said at the IPO ceremony in Mumbai. “We did it to reach people, from Delhi to the smallest towns of India.”

Lenskart plans to use the proceeds to support expansion, including opening new stores and strengthening its supply chain and retail infrastructure. The company also intends to invest in technology and marketing, and said a portion of the funds may be set aside for acquisitions and other general corporate purposes.

Existing investors including SoftBank, Schroders Capital, Premji Invest, Kedaara Capital and Alpha Wave Ventures sold shares in the IPO. Co-founders Peyush and Nehal Bansal, Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi also sold a portion of their holdings.

Lenskart’s listing comes at a time when several Indian startups are moving toward public markets as late-stage venture funding tightens and domestic investor appetite increases. Fintech firms Groww and Pine Labs, edtech platform PhysicsWallah, SaaS provider Capillary Technologies, and consumer brand BoAt are among the startups preparing for their IPOs in India.