Lenskart casts its eye on an accelerated growth plan

The eyewear online shopping store continues its disruptive offerings for customers with the free home trial offer. The latest TVC, conceptualised by Enormous, highlights this proposition

Aanchal Kohli | Mumbai | September 22, 2015

Click on the image to watch the TVC.

Lenskart, an eyewear online shopping store, has been instrumental in offering disruptive and one-of-its-kind services to its consumers. The latest offering for customers is free home trial of frames.

With this offer, the company intends to bring eyewear to consumers who hesitate to shop online for eyeglasses and sunglasses because they want to be sure about the fit and style of the pair they are picking up. Under this offer, consumers can select up to five pairs that they would like to try and a company representative would visit the consumers' homes with these selected five pairs, which the consumers can try on, take suggestions from friends and family about the look that complements them perfectly and mark their choice on the form that the delivery person is carrying and then finalise the booking.

The latest TVC from Lenskart informs about the free home trial offer. Conceptualised by Enormous, the TVC showcases a couple in a serious discussion and the context setting is intense, where the man asks the woman if she has made the decision and is comfortable with it. Without revealing the topic of the conversation, the build-up leads to the woman deciding on the frame that she has chosen for herself from the five options that the Lenskart representative has got with himself for the free home trial. It concludes with a voiceover talking about Lenskart's free home trial service. The TVC went live on September 12 across eight metros in India.

Vikrant Mudaliar, Chief Marketing Officer, Lenskart.com, said, “At Lenskart, we are driven by passion to revolutionise the eye care and eyewear industry one eye at a time. Eyewear is a complex category owing to a couple of reasons – apprehensions of purchasing eyewear online due to concerns about the fit and quality of the product, low accessibility to good eyewear and paucity of time to step out of the house and make the purchase, among others. This is the premise for Lenskart's innovative service, 'Free Home Trial'.”

“The idea of this TVC was to demonstrate the Free Home Trial service in a quirky and eye catching way. It is focused towards making consumers aware about Lenskart's innovative service and assure them that they can make eyewear purchases online at their own comfort and without compromising on the physical experience of the product,” he added.

Ashish Khazanchi, Founder, Enormous, added here, “The TVC highlights Lenskart's unique proposition of showcasing how the brand can help the consumers check and buy eyewear at their doorstep.”

The brief

The brief to the agency was to demonstrate Lenskart's unique free home trial service in an interesting manner, and at the same time highlighting the key aspects of the initiative.

The idea was to instil the assurance in the minds of the people that when they buy from Lenskart, it is of premium quality and they can be doubly sure of what they are buying by getting a free home trial. Once the customer selects the frame and places the order, Lenskart will deliver the selected frame with prescription lenses within 2-3 days. The free home trial facility is available in over 45 cities.

The challenge

According to Mudaliar, the only challenge that they faced was to talk about the free home trial service in the TVC without making it sound mundane or uninteresting. The main motive was to subtly put across the message in a quirky manner and at the same time keep it in line with Lenskart's tonality. “The TVC we have released is quite relatable and has an element of light humour. It captures the friction in the minds of a consumer in India while buying online and how Lenskart addresses it,” he added.

He further said, “Lenskart currently has over 100 stores spread across more than 66 Indian cities, including tier 2 and tier 3 cities like Agartala, Tirupathi, Siliguri, Raipur, Haridwar and Varanasi, to name a few. Our plan is to have around 2,000 stores in the near future and we are adding approximately 2-3 stores per week to get to that number.”

The Free Home Trial campaign began with social media promotions on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Commenting on the response received for the earlier two campaigns – 'First Frame Free' and 'Suzie', Mudaliar said, “We saw some great response to both of these campaigns that helped us interact with our existing and potential consumers. In fact, the Suzie campaign trended on Twitter for two days in a row. For us, a campaign is successful if people are able to connect with it well.”

Growth plans

Mudaliar informed that Lenskart had grown more than 200 per cent year on year in the last two years, to be among the top 3 optical businesses in India today. From an initial investment of Rs 30 lakh, Lenskart today is a Rs 360-crore company.

What asked whether they have been able to achieve their targets, he said, “Lenksart as a company has a very different approach to measuring success. We don't measure success in terms of how many eyewear we are able to sell, instead we count how many eyes we are able to serve. This basically means how many eye exams we have been able to conduct. Our home eye check-up campaign has helped us take this initiative to the next level. With an aim to revolutionise eyewear industry in India, Lenskart wishes to address the need gap in India among consumers. The long term aim is to change consumer behaviour which will ultimately lead to category ownership.”

Fundings and investments

Mudaliar added, “We announced our last funding round in January this year and the company raised around Rs 135 crore with participation from Hong Kong-based TR Capital and existing investor, IDG Ventures, for a significant minority stake. For now we aren't looking at raising funds any time soon. As far as investments are concerned, we are looking at investing Rs 60 crore in a manufacturing facility in the next six months. Also, we aim to close this financial year with about 200 physical stores up from 100 at present.”

The road ahead

Lenskart envisions to solve India's eye care problem and redefine the complex eyewear category. While the demand for eyewear is high, it is either not accessible or not affordable. Moreover, in the everyday routine, planning a visit to the local optician to make the eyewear purchase takes a backseat and consumers are apprehensive to order eyewear online. This is usually due to concerns about the quality, size and fit of the product. All these factors have led to people perceiving eyewear purchase as more of a planned purchase than an impulsive one.

Adding further, Mudaliar said, “Through our initiatives, we aim to change this behaviour and accelerate the uptake of eyewear through ways, convenient to consumers. The company is also extremely focused to provide customers all the necessary touch points to fuel this revolution in the eye wear industry.”

The TVC:

https://img-cdn.thepublive.com/filters:format(webp)/

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