- 3 weeks ago
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00:00Well, I think consumers are now bored of what they have been wearing, the same kind of eyewear.
00:05They want more excitement and, you know, Popmart has been creating the next generation of wave in terms of excitement
00:13and a partnership like that brings more authenticity, touches upon nodes which are beyond just utility.
00:20And, yeah, and the product is looking beautiful.
00:22I just checked it out at a lens card store yesterday and the best is yet to come.
00:26And the thing is, you have now become part of the pop culture, so to speak.
00:32How big a market is that? I mean, what are you looking at?
00:35Who are you targeting and what numbers are out there in terms of, you know, projections and ambitions?
00:41See, overall, if you look at eyewear, it has been a very underpenetrated category just a few decades back.
00:47Shoes used to be like that. We used to have a black shoes and a brown shoes and at best a running shoe.
00:51And today, I don't think both of us would know how many pairs of shoes we own right now.
00:57And when we walk into a store online or offline, we check out one more and if we like one, we pick it up.
01:02I think eyewear will go through the same level of transition.
01:05It's just that it requires work in terms of design, innovation.
01:09And then when you hit those trigger points with customers and you make it affordable and accessible, we see similar patterns.
01:16Industry average of eyewear has been traditionally about one pair every two years, which now moved to about 1.8.
01:24And lens card, it's almost about four pairs every two years.
01:27And that, I think, is something that we see growing further.
01:30And I think particularly with the growing myopia rates in all parts of the world, in Southeast Asia, where we are, almost 8 out of 10 people need glasses today.
01:42And why not wear fashionable, good-looking glasses since we are anyways that we have.
01:46But how much of a boost would this partnership with Popmart provide?
01:50See, it's difficult to give a number, but all of our growth is pegged on consumer choice right now.
01:59And, you know, because it's a non-discretionary purchase.
02:03I mean, I wasn't planning to buy a pair of eyewear, and now I suddenly bought another pair of eyewear.
02:07So if you look at lens card, which has been growing, H1 grew about 25%.
02:12A large part of that growth comes from people buying more and more.
02:16So this could just be the start of further collaborations, if you're talking about, you know, setting fashion trends and so on and so forth.
02:24Oh, absolutely.
02:25What are you looking at?
02:2612, 24 months.
02:26Are we looking at more collaborations?
02:28Many more.
02:28What would make sense?
02:30So we are partners with Disney Marvel.
02:32We have done collections from Dragon Ball to Harry Potter, third year in a row.
02:37The Batman collection, which is really popular here.
02:40Superman.
02:41We did Pokemon.
02:42We are tied up with designers in India, which is Masaba.
02:46And with Popmart, this is just one character.
02:50And we are looking forward to doing many more characters coming forward.
02:54So I would say in the next 24 months, you want to just blow it out even more and have more fun with eyewear.
02:59And people also want to have more fun with eyewear.
03:01What kind of growth are you anticipating?
03:03You have a global footprint.
03:05And it's not just in India, although I think right now, revenue in terms of international revenue, it comes to 40 percent.
03:12Do you see that being ramped up?
03:14See, overall, I think both markets are growing.
03:16I mean, if you look at H1, both markets are growing at roughly about 25 percent odd.
03:20And we see that continuing.
03:23Lenscard as a business, we are trying to build a global relevant brand.
03:27And we started first in Singapore and then expanded into Japan, other parts of Southeast Asia and Middle East.
03:34And a big part of that relevance creation in the local markets comes through design and innovation.
03:40So I think it's tough to predict right now how this will pan out.
03:44But I see both markets growing north of 20 percent healthy.
03:47And the risk to that, perhaps, given that, you know, perhaps people are anticipating a slowdown in the economy, that would hit consumption.
03:56See, eyewear is very underpenetrated.
03:58I mean, if you look at the number of eye tests we did just in the first half, we did about 10.7 million eye tests.
04:05We did 9 million eye tests approximately in whole of FY24.
04:10So this has been compounding at more than 50 percent.
04:13And most importantly, the number that matters is almost half of these eye tests are people who never got their eye tested before.
04:21I mean, Singapore, you're very well aware, every every child here gets myopic almost large part.
04:28I mean, I was reading some stats.
04:3083 percent people get myopic in Singapore by the age of 18.
04:33And, you know, at Lenscard, we are creating the market.
04:35We are making eyewear reach people who would never get it before.
04:40In Singapore, we sell two kids glasses for as low as $50.
04:43And we know eyewear has gone tech.
04:46And you've talked about how AI, AR are crucial to your growth projection.
04:51Talk to us about how you're incorporating all of that.
04:53What can be anticipated?
04:54You're wearing high-tech glasses right now.
04:56Yes.
04:57So I think, see, look, it's the next computing platform.
04:59The way I see it, there was laptop and there came the mobile, which was a very good extension.
05:04It didn't make laptops go away, but it did make a lot of things move to the laptop, like browsing and consumption.
05:11And now with this, you know, eyewear becoming a computing platform, which I'm very positive about, a lot of stuff that we do on the mobile will move here.
05:18One of them is being payments.
05:20So one of the things we have integrated in our new eyewear, which is coming, is that you'll be able to make, scan QR codes.
05:25No need to pick up the phone, enter a pin, scan, and do all of that.
05:29Photos, which is now heavily used on mobile, I think will move here today.
05:34You know, I was just at Gardens by the Bay on Sunday with my son, and I could just look up in the sky and record the whole beautiful scene.
05:41So I think a lot of that would move.
05:43I think a lot of logging food, getting information of the context.
05:47It is going to be a big computing platform.
05:49The other area where I think tech would be heavily involved in style, as we just spoke about, I mean, we just launched an AI platform on our app where you could just sit in front of the mobile phone, and it knows your face shape.
06:02It knows the clothes you're wearing, and it could recommend this is what you should be wearing for your interview today, right?
06:08And that, I see a lot of power.
06:10And then, of course, accessibility, like we have seen in e-commerce, it has been missing in eyewear.
06:14But at Lenscard, we have been building a fully vertically integrated stack all the way from manufacturing to retail, which we have not seen in custom manufacturing categories.
06:24So what kind of investments are you putting into AI, AR, R&D within the company?
06:29And, you know, what kind of returns are you anticipating on the back of that?
06:34See, at Lenscard, if you look at the overall thesis that the company has is investment into talent and technology, and eyewear has been deprived of that.
06:43It's difficult to say where are we putting because everything is becoming AI today, all the way from supply chain integration.
06:51So let me give you an example.
06:53Today we do eye tests in Mumbai, but the optometrist is not sitting in Mumbai.
06:58They are sitting in Kolkata, and they are doing an eye test in Mumbai where optometrists are difficult to find.
07:05One of the biggest problems that Asia is facing is where we have about 35, 40 opticians slash optometrists for a million people.
07:11That's just not going to be enough.
07:13And so what we are working towards is can we bring AI to do self-eye tests, which is already under pilot right now in a lot of locations?
07:21Can we move eye testing to mobile phone, which is a pretty powerful camera?
07:24So that's one area to bring access into the ecosystem.
07:27Second is can we do this in a centralized way?
07:29Because doing it in a locally distributed way is not scalable.
07:33It's very, very expensive.
07:34So we today in our factory ship glasses in more than 60 cities next day.
07:40So you place an order at 9 p.m.
07:42In Singapore, we just launched a two-hour service for you to get products.
07:47So I think there's a lot of tech involved there.
07:49And then, you know, in the styling angle, which, you know, one undermines.
07:53But I think that is where, you know, we don't buy mobile phone today for talking on the phone.
07:57We buy it because the camera keeps getting better, and then you need the next version.
08:02So I think that element is very, very important.
08:04So it does seem like you don't buy eyewear now for seeing things.
08:08It's also for taking pictures and so on and so forth.
08:10You have become a tech company, essentially.
08:13I mean, what is the strategy going forward?
08:15I mean, how will the company look like in five years, for instance?
08:20I mean, I wouldn't say we have become.
08:22I believe we started as a tech company.
08:24None of us are really from an eyewear background, if you look at the – except one of the co-founders.
08:29Most of us were working in the tech domain before, and we today, if you look at majority of our payroll costs, we have more than 500 engineers developing solutions from selection to choice to affordability to accessibility to now smart eyewear to the next version coming where there will be waveguides.
08:47So in the next five years, I think Lenskart transforming from an eyewear company, tech-enabled eyewear company to a tech eyewear and data company because what you're capturing in this device right now is all going to get into the Lenskart platform, and we are building it full stack all the way from hardware, firmware, software.
09:07So when you log your food from a bee glasses, we call these bee, and I say, okay, hey, bee, tell me, should I be eating this today?
09:16That information is traveling into the Lenskart app.
09:18That makes me understand the consumer better.
09:20If you want to – if you're getting bored today, you want to chat, okay, hey, bee, I'm getting bored.
09:26Can we chat just like a counselor or just like a friend?
09:28That information.
09:29And that tells us a lot more about consumers, and that builds a subscription ecosystem in the future.
09:34So you become a one-stop shop.
09:37Is that the end goal, providing all the services?
09:41And I'm also wondering right now as you look to the future, who do you view as your competitors?
09:45Who are you competing with globally?
09:47So first question.
09:49First, I think the way I look at it is that eyewear can play a very large role in transforming your quality of life.
09:56And we have seen that with many other categories, but this being right in front on your face and the more it can do for you, and that's why our tagline is do more, be more.
10:05I mean, and our mission is transform the way people see and experience the world.
10:09So it clearly fits in what we have been trying to do.
10:14And our competition, to be honest, is people habits, right?
10:17If you look at today –
10:18No, I mean companies.
10:19Who are you competing with for market share?
10:21I mean, it is difficult to say because our approach at doing this is very different.
10:26And we are not really in any sense trying to just consolidate the market.
10:31We are creating the market.
10:32I mean, I just told you that more than 45% of the eye tests we did are people who never did eye tests.
10:39The people who are wearing glasses, many would have never worn glasses if we didn't create some of those solutions.
10:44I mean, we are delivering glasses next day, same day, and that creates demand.
10:48So I'm not able to put right now a pen on.
10:51And to be honest, we do not have, especially in this part of the world, players which have been able to organize it and push the bar on customer experience every day.
11:02What are you most excited about?
11:03What are we not seeing today that you think you will create in due time?
11:08See, one thing which we are not seeing today is just the size of the market, right?
11:13I think often people go at market numbers.
11:16I think while they are large, they are often understated.
11:19I think what we are not seeing is that there is a market creation under the carpet which is happening.
11:26Just to give you an example, we used to deliver glasses in seven days.
11:30It became four days, three days.
11:32Now we deliver glasses next day and now maybe even same day.
11:35Now what that is doing is it is creating a market which never existed before.
11:38And I think a lot of people are not seeing that.
11:40Second, I think just the multiplicity which we are seeing that people are not going to wear one pair of glasses.
11:47And I think we have seen the journey from one to four every two years.
11:51I won't be surprised and I'm quite confident, I would say on the other hand, of this four becoming many folds more in the times to come,
11:58which I think it's difficult for us to anticipate, but we could not guess that about shoes at any point in time.
12:03And this is even more powerful from where it sits and in a digital Zoom world where only this part of the face is visible.
12:11And third, I would say, is just the computing angle.
12:14I think this is the next computing platform.
12:17This is with camera, but very soon the next version will have waveguides so I can look at you and I can get a little bit of snippet.
12:24I can do translations.
12:26That, I think, is going to happen faster than what people are imagining.
12:29I just have one final question.
12:31You IPO recently valuing the company at about $8 billion.
12:34Do you think $8 billion reflects the kind of value you will bring in the years to come or should you be valued higher than that?
12:43Well, you know, as far as that, look, IPO is not a destination, right?
12:48It's a beginning of a journey in many ways and it's a milestone.
12:51And we have been here for about 14 years now.
12:55I think we stay committed to building at Lenskart even after serving 25 million odd pairs.
13:01We only have scratched the surface.
13:03We own like 5 percent market share.
13:05So there's a lot for us to do.
13:06And myopia is a problem that remains under addressed right now.
13:12Even in a market like Southeast Asia, there are no solutions that exist right now.
13:17And so there's a lot more ahead of us.
13:19And I think valuations are a function of growth.
13:22That's not answering my question.
13:23So you think you should be valued higher than that?
13:27I'm not saying that.
13:28I think we are not working for a valuation just on the IPO, right?
13:34We have to work hard.
13:35And at the end of the day, it's the numbers that will speak and the investors will value on our performance.
13:39And that's what we've been doing in the first two quarters of this year.
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