BENGALURU: Eyewear unicorn Lenskart’s co-founder Peyush Bansal wants start-up founders to select the right business partner rather than maximising valuations.
Speaking at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024, on Thursday, he asked founders to choose the partner ‘who sees what you are seeing, trust you not just during good times but also in bad times, and who can think long-term with you’.
“I see this huge problem with the Indian start-up ecosystem today is that people (founders) are just rushing after valuations. It is good for the short-term, but in the long-term, what matters is the transformation and the value that we are creating,” he said, adding this cannot be achieved by optimising for the short-term.
His statement comes just days after reports suggested that the eyewear company is looking for a secondary sale and if it materialises, its valuation could touch $6 billion. Currently, its valuation is about $5.6 billion.
Founded in 2010, its co-founders include Amit Chaudhary and Neha Bansal, among others. So far, it has raised $1.08 billion in 19 rounds and its annual revenue as on March 2024 stood at `5,610 crore.
He has worked in an optical store as a sales assistant for one year without any salary to understand the market. In a chat with Prashanth Prakash, Founding partner - Accel India, Bansal said the person whose store I worked with is now the third co-founder in Lenskart.
“Before investors came in there was no business plan,” he said, adding, when we got the money, we were trying to build a business.
At the session, Ashish Hemrajani, CEO, BookMyShow, said today more than 50% of the company’s growth and sales come from outside the top 20 cities. “Until about five years ago, 90% of our sales came from the top 20 cities,” he said.