- Monday, May 05, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIAN retailer Lenskart has acquired a majority stake in Japanese eyewear brand Owndays to emerge the region’s biggest omni-channel eyewear business by taking it to more than 10 markets in Asia, including India, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, among others.
According to a Moneycontrol report, the deal is said to be worth $400 million but the company reportedly did not disclose details.
Lenskart said in a press release that Owndays’s co-founders Shuji Tanaka (chief executive officer) and Take Umiyama (chief operating officer) will continue as shareholders and lead the management team even as the brand will function independently.
The Moneycontrol report added that the current major shareholders of the Japanese retailer, including L Catterton Asia and Mitsui & Co., Principal Investment will sell their stake.
Peyush Bansal, co-founder and group CEO at Lenskart, which is based in Faridabad in the northern state of Haryana, said, “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.”
Last month, Neso Brands, a roll-up subsidiary of Lenskart, raised $100 million from firms such as KKR, Softbank, Alpha Wave Global and Temasek.
Lenskart is one of the early unicorns in the direct-to-consumer segment and is valued at $4.3 billion at the moment. The company, which aims to scale up to 500 people in FY2023, has also been making investment in deeper supply chain integration and automation, the report added.
