From a instructor’s smile to a milestone: Peyush Bansal’s message forward of Lenskart’s mega itemizing

On the eve of Lenskart’s much-awaited market debut, founder and CEO Peyush Bansal has penned a deeply private letter that reads much less like a company announcement and extra like a heartfelt reflection on goal, folks, and the promise of tomorrow. 

“Fifteen years in the past, I didn’t dream of ringing a bell,” Bansal writes. “I simply needed to resolve one easy, human downside — that hundreds of thousands of individuals in India couldn’t see clearly.” He remembers considered one of Lenskart’s earliest clients — a instructor who had stopped studying her college students’ notebooks due to poor imaginative and prescient. When she lastly wore her new glasses, “she smiled, then cried softly,” telling him she hadn’t realised “the world nonetheless regarded this brilliant.” 

“That second nonetheless offers me goosebumps,” Bansal shares. “It jogged my memory that imaginative and prescient isn’t simply eyesight. It’s dignity. It’s pleasure. It’s risk.” 

From small wows to a manner of working 

Tracing the corporate’s development, Bansal credit not technique decks however an obsession with what he calls “small wows.” Each little element — from retailer opinions to air-conditioning checks — mattered. “Excellence has no geography,” he writes. “Whether or not it’s Patna or Tokyo, the usual should be the identical.” 

Over time, these “small wows” turned a lifestyle at Lenskart — “a refusal to settle, and a perception that there’s at all times a greater manner.” 

Day Zero: The start, not the top 

For Bansal, tomorrow’s IPO just isn’t a end line however a contemporary begin. “When Lenskart lists on the Indian inventory change, it is going to appear like a milestone. To me, it looks like Day Zero — the start of a brand new promise.” 

He describes the corporate’s evolution as shifting from giving imaginative and prescient to India, to giving imaginative and prescient from India. “We didn’t construct Lenskart to achieve a valuation. We constructed it to achieve folks — from Delhi’s coronary heart to the smallest cities within the Northeast.” 

Constructing world establishments from India 

Reflecting on India’s startup ecosystem, Bansal remembers the bittersweet second when Flipkart was offered to Walmart. “It reminded us that we have been nonetheless parting with our desires early.” Having returned to India from Microsoft, he says, his purpose was to construct firms “that would stand shoulder to shoulder with the very best on the earth and nonetheless carry India of their DNA.” 

“Lenskart was born out of that dream — that India can construct world establishments, not simply startups.” 

“To resolve a billion-person downside, perception alone wasn’t sufficient — we would have liked know-how,” Bansal writes. Lenskart constructed a lot of its tech in-house — from AI instruments that measure eyes to robotic methods reducing lenses “correct to microns.” 

“At present, we’re constructing the working system of eyewear,” he says. “But when know-how doesn’t attain everybody, it’s not innovation; it’s ornament.” 

‘B by Lenskart’: The subsequent leap 

The corporate’s subsequent chapter, B by Lenskart, is what Bansal calls the subsequent frontier. “‘B’ stands for Higher, but in addition for Breakthrough,” he explains. “These aren’t simply glasses. They’re the beginning of a brand new interface between folks and the world.” 

“Each buyer we serve is our IPO,” he provides. “The markets might ring the bell as soon as, however our clients ring it each single day — after they smile, after they see clearly once more.” 

Imaginative and prescient without any consideration, not a privilege 

Bansal additionally shines a lightweight on the Lenskart Basis, led by his spouse, Nidhi. Impressed by philanthropist Ronnie Screwvala’s eye-testing vans, Bansal determined to take that mission additional. “That is ours to do, not yours,” he instructed Screwvala. 

The Basis, he notes, has grown “quietly — one village, one college, one van at a time,” with a mission “to not make headlines, however to make imaginative and prescient attain the place it’s been forgotten.” 

“We’ve completed this earlier than as a rustic,” he reminds. “India eradicated polio. Why not visible impairment?” 

On the coronary heart of the letter is gratitude — for the individuals who constructed the corporate from scratch. “You’re the motive Lenskart exists,” Bansal tells his staff. “You helped flip a startup right into a household, and an organization right into a trigger.” 

In one of many letter’s most quoted strains, he writes: “Revenue is oxygen — it retains us alive. However goal is breath — it retains us human.” 

Daily is ‘Day Zero’ 

As he prepares to ring the bell, Bansal says the sound received’t mark victory however renewal. “When the bell rings, it’ll remind us to maintain constructing, innovating, serving, dreaming. As a result of for us, each buyer, each smile of readability — is Day Zero.” 

He ends with an invite: “If you’re sporting Lenskart glasses — immediately, tomorrow, or any day — take a selfie and share it with #VisionForBillion. Let’s construct this collectively — one body, one smile, one imaginative and prescient at a time.” 

Signed merely: “To a journey of desires and future.”