Lenskart Brand Guidelines: From a 2010 Web Shop to a Listed Gurugram Eyewear Chain

A campus website, a US test and a contact-lens shop.

Lenskart did not start as an eyewear company. English Wikipedia says that in May 2008 Peyush Bansal founded a firm called Valyoo Technologies to run a college classifieds website, SearchMyCampus.com. After Amit Chaudhary joined as a co-founder in 2009, the company tried an eyewear web shop for the United States, Flyrr.com.

The turn came in November 2010. That month, English Wikipedia says, the company closed both earlier websites and launched Lenskart.com, selling contact lenses in India, and added eyeglasses and sunglasses early in 2011. Sumeet Kapahi joined as a third co-founder in September 2011, so the brand is usually linked with three founders.

For a short time the company ran a small family of “kart” shops. English Wikipedia lists Watchkart.com and Bagskart.com, opened in 2011, and Jewelskart.com in 2012, following advice from an early investor to copy the business model of Titan. By the end of 2014 only Lenskart.com was left, as the company shut the others to concentrate on eyewear, and in 2015 Valyoo Technologies was renamed Lenskart Solutions. The company is based in Gurugram, which English Wikipedia spells Gurgaon.

The physical stores came later. English Wikipedia now describes Lenskart as a vertically integrated company that designs, makes, distributes and sells prescription and other eyewear, selling through its website, a mobile app and its own shops.

Factories, stores and a house of brands.

Making its own frames and lenses is central to how Lenskart presents itself. English Wikipedia names a manufacturing plant at Bhiwadi in Rajasthan. In its shareholder letter for the quarter to September 2026, reported by MediaNama in November 2026, the company said in-house frame output came from its units in India, China and Thailand, and that it is building a further plant in Hyderabad to serve demand at home and abroad. The company credited more in-house making of frames and lenses, and centralised manufacturing, for part of its recent results, MediaNama reported.

The store network is now the brand’s most visible face. According to the same MediaNama report, Lenskart’s India network spanned 2,868 stores in 665 cities at the end of that quarter, and its global count of active stores stood at 3,624. In that quarter alone it added 143 net new stores in India, 94 of them in smaller Tier 2 and beyond markets, and reached 61 new cities; abroad it added 22, of which 12 were in Southeast Asia, three in the Middle East and two in Japan. In October 2026 the company opened its first Lenskart evolv concept store, in Worli, Mumbai, and its own smart glasses, sold simply as B, were on sale in 500 Indian stores and online, after a first roll-out in the quarter to March 2026. In the same letter, chief executive Peyush Bansal wrote that thousands of store associates begin the day with Saathi, a self-learning AI assistant, and that the company also uses AI to screen hires, train new staff and answer customer calls.

Lenskart has also become a holder of other brands. It launched its own premium label, John Jacobs, in 2017, English Wikipedia says. In June 2022 it announced a majority stake in the Japanese optical chain Owndays. In 2025 it bought Stellio, the Spanish owner of the Barcelona sunglasses brand Meller, and in November 2025 it brought Meller to India alongside John Jacobs, Owndays and Le Petit Lunetier, Moneycontrol reported on 15 November 2025, describing the move as a push into premium and fashion eyewear aimed at younger, Gen Z customers.

How optical chains present themselves.

Optical retail chains are first of all shops, and their own material usually starts there. When studying one, look at how the fascia carries the name from across a shopping centre, how the frame wall is lit, grouped and photographed, and how the company’s news pages show openings and refits. Store counts appear again and again in these pages, so read them as dated figures from the company rather than as fixed facts.

Campaign imagery is the second layer. Many chains work with a well-known face, from footballers to television presenters, and describe that person plainly as an ambassador; others build films around customers, families or a single repeated line. For a design study, note who is in the frame, whether the glasses or the person lead the picture, and how one slogan or visual device carries across television, radio, social media and the shop window.

The website is now a third shopfront. Optical chains commonly offer an online try-on, either a camera-based virtual fitting or a service that lets visitors choose frames online and reserve them in a nearby shop, along with appointment booking and frame advice pages. These tools carry the identity into small interface details: buttons, product grids, colour accents and the photography of frames on plain backgrounds.

Behind the shop sign sits a corporate structure that a design guide should state carefully. Some chains are cooperatives of independent opticians, some run franchise networks, and many belong to investment firms or to a larger eyewear group. Corporate pages on owners, takeovers and franchise terms explain why one name can look different from country to country, and why a familiar sign can change hands while the shops stay open. In the guides that follow, owners and dates come from dated sources, and palettes are our own interpretation rather than official brand colours.

Film stars, social scores and a stock-market debut.

Lenskart’s advertising has leaned on famous faces. English Wikipedia says the company signed its first brand ambassador, Katrina Kaif, in October 2017, and in March 2019 hired Bhuvan Bam as its first male ambassador.

Its newer campaigns lean on screens and social media as much as on celebrities. In the Arab region, the regional marketing title Communicate reported on 28 October 2026, Lenskart ran “Score Your Frame,” an activation built around a social-media activity score: participants shared their scores and were matched with eyewear tiers named Rookie, Eye-Con and Legend, and the company said more than 30,000 people took part. The campaign never named the social platform it drew on, and creators who had not been briefed or paid by Lenskart published their own posts, the report says. The same report says Lenskart was extending the idea to its Ezz Collection through a virtual try-on on Snapchat, and that it uses AI-powered virtual try-on for online shopping more widely. Communicate sums the company up as a technology-led eyewear business spanning design, manufacturing, branding and retail, selling prescription glasses, sunglasses, contact lenses and accessories.

The company is now public. Lenskart launched its initial public offering in October 2025, English Wikipedia says, and its shares made their market debut on 10 November 2025 on both the BSE and the National Stock Exchange of India, Mint reported in October 2026.

For a design guide, Lenskart shows how a brand born as a web address can carry its name onto thousands of shop fascias, a smart-glasses line and a portfolio of foreign labels, while keeping the try-on screen at the centre of its story. Compare Warby Parker, another eyewear company that began online, and Specsavers. For this guide we use ink blue, lagoon teal and mist with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Lenskart’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.