Abstract

The case “Lenskart.com: Setting Its Sight on the Indian Eyewear Market” talks about the various business aspects that led to the rise of Lenskart as a disruptive eyewear solutions company in India. The case starts out by mentioning Lenskart’s early days as a start-up vertical ecommerce company and the business practices it adopted to make buying eyewear online popular in India’s highly fragmented eyewear market. It then describes the different marketing and promotional strategies implemented by Lenskart to entice customers. The case provides the factors that pushed Lenskart to becoming an omni-channel retailer with both an online and offline presence. Lenskart’s tie-ups and investments in start-ups working on either products or technologies in the eyewear space are also described. The case ends with a look into the challenges being faced by the company. How can Lenskart sustain its position in the Indian eyewear market and achieve its aim of coming out with an Initial Public Offering (IPO)? Can Lenskart’s Founder and CEO, Peyush Bansal (Bansal), overcome the big challenge of leading the company to success in the highly competitive but vastly untapped Indian eyewear market?

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Analyze the business aspects of an ecommerce company that provide it with unique competitive advantages.
• Examine the nuances of the omni-channel retail strategy of an ecommerce company.
• Study the marketing strategy of an e-commerce company.
• Scrutinize the challenges of an e-commerce company in a competitive business market.

Keywords

Lenskart; Competitive advantage; Omni channel strategy; E-commerce marketing strategy; Indian eyewear market; Online vs offline selling; Strategic tie-ups; Fragmented markets; E-Business Models; M-Commerce; E-commerce Sales Life Cycle; Michael Porter’s Model of Competitive Advantage; Differentiation; Vertical E-commerce; Marketing Mix