Lenskart Co-founder Peyush Bansal makes strategic move, acquires stakes in Japanese eyewear brand

India’s leading prescription glasses company Lenskart and Japanese Direct-to-Consumer eyewear brand Owndays today announced a strategic partnership via a merger taking the group’s reach to 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, a press release from Lenskart and Owndays said.

The current major shareholders of Owndays – L Catterton Asia and Mitsui & Co., Principal Investments – will exit their positions to Lenskart.

“The way people buy eyewear is changing rapidly and at Lenskart it is our mission to drive this transformation globally. In today’s age, the customer wants great products, great prices, and delightful experiences all the time. With Owndays we move a step closer to democratizing eyewear,” Peyush Bansal, Co-Founder, and Group CEO at Lenskart said.


“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.”

Owndays Founder and CEO Shuji Tanaka commented, “Owndays has been recognized as the eyewear brand of choice across multiple countries in Asia ever since we opened our first overseas store, in Singapore in 2013.


“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.”

Founded in 2010, Tech-enabled start-up Lenskart is the largest eyewear brand in India. It ships over 10 million pairs of eyewear every year and has 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 50+% in 2022. The company is backed by Falcon Edge Capital, SoftBank, KKR, Temasek, Premji Invest, Kedaara Capital among other key investors.


Owndays is a leading eyewear brand in Asia headquartered in Japan and Singapore with around 460 stores across 13 markets in the region – Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Hong Kong, India, and the UAE.

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. - TWL Bureau