India’s eyewear market segments into spectacles, sunglasses, and contact lenses of which spectacles account for more than 70% of the market. This share is likely to increase given the poor dietary habits of people and increased screen time. It also indicates the increasing need for eye care solutions that brands compete to mitigate.

Titan, Lenskart, Gangar Nation, and Vision Express are some of the leading eyewear chains in India in the organized sector. 

Titan Eye+ accounts approx 800 stores spread across 300+ cities of the country and aims to reach 1000 stores by the end of 2023. It is also innovating products like audio sunglasses, virus-protective glasses, and lenses among others. In 2022, their profit touched upon a benchmark of 38 crores.

In 2022, Lenkart reached a pinnacle of 1000 retail stores in India and beyond but until March 2023, they scaled to another thousand stores totaling 2000+ stores; of which three-fourths are based in India.

Following the footprints of these brands, there are many players who are leveraging online and offline hybrid business models. In this article, we’ll be talking about five such fast-growing optical chains in India.

Specsmakers

People know Specsmakers Opticians Private Limited as South India’s largest retail optical chain. Mr. Shah laid its foundation in 2007. It has approx 300 optical stores across Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andra Pradesh, and Telangana. They are also to establish their presence in the state of Kerela. In an interview with Business Line, Mr. Pratik mentions his plan to open 600-700 stores in south India. 

Coming to their online presence, they received over 80,000+ visitors to their website in the first quarter of 2023. 17.6% of it is direct search while 80.6% is organic search (appearing in search result pages in Google for specific searches). 

Specsmakers has by far raised $18.2M in funding amount according to Crunchbase. Their operating revenue ranges from 1cr to 100cr in the fiscal year 2022. Altogether we can say the brand is growing steadily given all the stats.

Clear Dekho

The minicorn Clear Dekho was founded by Shivi Singh, and Saurabh Dayal in 2016. Their clear goal is to make affordable eyewear accessible to the low-income mass market, basically, tier 2, 3, 4, and 5 cities. 

However, their approach to achieving this is quite unique. Rather than competing with the 80% of unorganized market, they envision a strong ecosystem to empower small opticians and mitigate the vision needs of semi-urban cities/towns of India. The O2O approach gives double benefits to buyers both on their online marketplace and franchise retail outlets across different cities. Even their franchise model is quite light that allows scalability and easy expanse across tier 2 to 5 geos in India.

Looking into their funding history they have by far raised $13.3M funding in over 9 rounds. Going by their website, Clear Dekho has grown 1300% in just 3 years with 300000+ eyeglasses delivered from 80+ eyewear stores in India spread across 30+ cities. Talking of their website, over 40k people visit their website monthly. Clearly, they are forging forward to umpteen growth.

EyeMyEye

Laid its foundation in 2021 by Mr. Ganesh Iyer, EyeMyEye is majorly an eCommerce platform for eyewear. However, a small module on their website called “Explore Nearby” allows buyers to explore local optical stores offering YOPO (You Only Pay For One) offer. It bridges them in the local markets but it doesn’t make their model O2O. However, they are definitely worthy of a spot on this list. 

Their eyewear collection has a contemporary style to fit in with millennial tastes while also catering to the vintage flavor of older individuals. Furthermore, their 4000+ fantastic designs are well worth it.

The eCommerce brand though very young has captured the minds of consumers. Proof of that is statistics from Similarweb. In the month of March and April, they experienced 1.1M and 1.3M visits on their website respectively. 

Coming to the funding history, Eyemyeye has undertaken 3 funding rounds totaling an amount of $4.95M. In total, there are 8 investors in the privately held company and a massive team of 150 people.

Whether or not, they’ll explore the unorganized market with retail outlets, we don’t know but surely their future seems bright!

Spexmojo

Spexmojo is a venture by GKB Hitech and Shivkumar Janardhanan, former CEO of Essilor India. Compared to Eyemyeye, their business model is largely dependent on local opticians. Their vast network of partnered opticians, allows them to sell their products on Spexmojo. It is partly a marketplace, partly an offline model, and partly an online. Therefore, we can say that Spexmojo.com is an online eyewear marketplace that lets shoppers discover trending eyewear near their location. 

In the words of Promoter Director, Shobit Gupta, “The idea Spexmojo is implementing will revolutionize the optical industry in many ways, from sourcing quality products to dispensing the choice of the consumers in a no-compromise purchase journey.”

Indeed, such a model will empower the 80% unorganized sector significantly. With brands competing in this model too, consumers are likely to be on the winning side.

Chashma

A new entrant but a strong competitor in the optical retail market is Chashma, founded by Mr. Rohit Gupta. With a fast-spanning presence with 12 stores across six states of India, Chashma is making its mark amongst eyewear brands in India. 

Betting on their made-in-India products, the brand creatively instills an indigenous feeling gaining trust and recognition amongst buyers. Chasma makes its objective clear, high-quality eyewear at ridiculously affordable prices. The quirky brand communication clearly targets the youth of the country.

Lenspick.com

Bangalore-based Lenspick.com was founded in 2013 by Mr. Dileep C Byra with $500K in funding. Lenspick is ambitious to give a better vision to the people of India. Spread across Bangalore and Hyderabad, they offer a stylish and vivid range of eyeglasses, sunglasses, contact lenses, and a try-at-home feature. However, their specialty remains sunglasses with power. By far, they have 12 operational stores in Bangalore and 1 in Hyderabad. 

In their last funding round, they raised a sound funding of $10M. This was their later stage VC; they undertook 3 more rounds prior to it. Whether we’ll see more stores opening in the region? We’ll leave it to time! Above all, the company is growing steadily with a smooth online and offline model.

Final words

Although 25% of Indians need vision correction, eyewear is now more than just a need. Ever since the growth of optical eCommerce in India, the cosmetic value of an eyewear piece has taken over its original purpose. Hence, we see brands betting on trendy eyewear and vision needs as well.

The most renowned eyewear retail brand, Lenskart, has been a trendsetter amongst millennials focusing on fast and inexpensive fashion. Lenskart success story is quite an inspirational one. However, there are many other behemoths competing neck to neck for this market share while recording mind-boggling revenues. 

Additionally, India’s prolific eyewear market has drawn global giants such as Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters both a subsidiary of EssilorLuxotica to expand their presence here. Sunglass Hut has about 85 retail outlets in India and plans to reach 100.

Clearly, the competition in the optical industry is getting increasingly fierce. It is also evident that the Indian optical industry is undergoing transformation, one that has brought upon a realization to create a robust digital footprint for every player in the organized and/or unorganized eyewear market sector. It is farfetched for small opticians to compete with optical giants. However, Google My Business Profile and social media are the best marketing tools to leverage. 

While you sink into this piece of content, we at Eyetrraction will come up with the next list of eyewear chains in India soon. If you would like to add a few names to the list, the comment section is open!