Shark Tank India has managed to grab the attention of India’s audiences in a way, unlike any other show being broadcasted currently. And as season 1 came to a close, one of the sharks decided to surprise us by putting themselves in the participant’s position.
© Sony Liv
With the last pitch of the finale week, the kindest shark, Peyush Bansal stepped forward to pitch his company, Lensskart to the other sharks on the panel – Aman Gupta, Anupam Mittal, Ashneer Grover, Ghazal Alagh, and Namita Thapar.
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By now we all know that Peyush is the co-founder of Lenskart, a brand that has successfully managed to make eyewear accessible and affordable to the masses in our country. And in this particular episode of Shark Tank India, Peyush decided to offer the other sharks a piece of Lenskart’s pie – 1% equity for Rs. 1 crore investment.
© Sony LIV
Serial pitcher, Peyush Bansal obviously knows how to sway a room in order to get what he wants, so he started his pitch by tugging at the shark’s heartstrings, “A lot of people in this world are lucky enough to visualise their dream, but there are so many of who can’t even see (Sapne toh bahot log dekhte hain par duniya mein bahot log aise hain jo dekh hi nahi sakte)”
At several points in Shark Tank India, Peyush talks about the importance of running a purpose-driven business rather than just chasing the next bag of cash. And that’s the core belief that Lenskart runs on as well, after all, 1 in 3 Indians suffer from poor vision. This is why Bansal built the brand, in order to make vision accessible to the masses.
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The episode even alludes to the similarity in names between Lenskart and another Indian startup. However, Peyush goes on to clarify that he registered his brand’s domain way back in 2010, way before Flipkart. He went on to explain how he also owns several other ‘kart’ based domain names as well – Toyskart, Watchkart, Bagskart, and Jewelskart.
Lenskart’s co-founder went on to explain how a chance encounter with Bill Gates inspired him to make the jump to starting his own business, as Peyush didn’t want to be just another one of the roughly fifty thousand employees working for Microsoft. In his own words, “I want to do something revolutionary (Kuch revolutionary karna hai)”.
Peyush’s goal is simple, he wants to create the same brand value among the masses that Maruti did at one point in time, by becoming the Maruti of eyewear. He said, “Just like Maruti made cars accessible to each and every Indian, we want them to get the satisfaction of proper vision through Lenskart (Jaise Maruti ne gaadiyon ka such har ek Hindustani ko diya hai, hum chahte hai Lenskart ke through wo vision ka sukh har Hindustani ko de)”.
While the pitch was seemingly in jest, it was inspiring nonetheless and goes to show the drive that Peyush possesses for his work.
