Industry News
Lenskart To Acquire Majority Stake in Eyewear Brand OWNDAYS
Indian omnichannel retailer Lenskart has acquired a majority stake in Japanese eyewear brand OWNDAYS. Lenskart has bought all the shares held by a joint venture between an investment company affiliated with LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and a fund affiliated with Mitsui & co.
The two companies have been at the forefront of the vision care industry’s transformation in Asia. The combined business will create the region’s largest omnichannel eyewear business with 1500 stores across 13 markets in Asia including India, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan.
OWNDAYS 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. Our growth accelerated following L Catterton Asia’s and Mitsui & Co., Principal Investments’ participation in us in 2018, as we leveraged their strong commercial network in Japan and across the region to expand our operations to cover a total of 13 markets today. I believe digital transformation is the key to our next phase of growth in the post-pandemic operating environment and 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.”
Peyush Bansal, Co-Founder, and Group CEO at Lenskart said, “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. 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 centred 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.”
