Peyush Bansal is an Indian entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Lenskart, an Indian optical prescription eyewear retail chain.
Wiki/Biography
Peyush Bansal was born on Friday, 26 April 1985 (age 37 years; as of 2022) in New Delhi. His zodiac sign is Taurus. He attended Don Bosco School, Delhi, and went on to pursue a degree in Electrical Engineering (2002-2006)) from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Thereafter, he enrolled himself at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, to pursue Management Programme for Entrepreneurs and Family Businesses (MPEFB) (2008-2009).
Physical Appearance
Height (approx.): 5′ 7″
Hair Colour: Black
Eye Colour: Black
Family
Parents & Siblings
Peyush’s mother’s name is Kiran Bansal. Not much is known about his father. He has one elder brother.
Peyush Bansal with his family
Wife
Peyush Bansal is married to Nimisha Bansal.
Peyush Bansal with his wife
Career
Peyush started his career in 2007 as a Program Manager at Microsoft, Redmond, Washington. At Microsoft, his work involved coming up with ideas that could improve customer experience. The job didn’t interest him much and he decided to quit after working there for around a year. Subsequently, Peyush returned to India and started searching for start-up ideas. In 2007, he launched SearchMyCampus, a campus classifieds portal. The portal provided various services to college students including accommodation, internships, transportation, books, and part-time jobs. The project was fairly successful. Meanwhile, he pursued a management diploma in entrepreneurship from IIM Bangalore. He then launched a couple of startups that worked very well. In 2010, he founded Lenskart along with Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi.
Peyush Bansal with Amit Chaudhary and Sumeet Kapahi
Initially, the firm sold only contact lenses and slowly, it expanded its operations and began dealing in eyeglasses and sunglasses as well.
Subsequently, he co-founded eyewear startups like John Jacobs (2015), Aqualens (2019), Lenskart Plus (2020), and Lenskart Vision Fund (2020). These all were funded by Lenskart. In 2019, Lenskart entered the unicorn club with a valuation of $1.5 billion; a unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion. Despite starting as an online company, Lenskart has around 600 retail stores and around 4000 employees spread across the country (as of 2022).
A Lenskart store in Pune, Maharashtra
In 2021, Peyush appeared as a jury member in ‘Shark Tank India,’ the Indian adaptation of the American business reality TV show ‘Shark Tank.’
Peyush Bansal on the set of Shark Tank India
Controversy
In January 2022, Peyush landed into controversy for his comments on the Chartered Accountant community during an episode of the Indian reality TV show ‘Shark Tank India.’ Reportedly, while finalising an investment deal with PNT robotics founders on the show Peyush made the remarks,
Ek advice hai, CA se durr raho.”
His comments offended the CA community following which ‘Say No To Lenskart’ became a popular trend on social media (especially among CAs). People also started a petition against Bansal on Change.Org, asking for his removal from Shark Tank India. The petition reads,
No one can make a mockery of professionals on National Television just for the sake of looking cool! Such people with loose talks should correct his generic comments for CAs / be banned from Shark Tank India.”
Later, Peyush issued an apology letter saying that he made the comments in a funny way. He wrote,
My choice of words and the way it came out was wrong. My intent was not what came out in the show. It was a light-hearted comment made in jest, that has been taken completely out of context.”
Favourities
Facts/Trivia
- Peyush loves watching films and travelling in his leisure time.
- His role model is Bill Gates.
- In 2017, the Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif was appointed as the brand ambassador of Peyush’s company Lenskart.
Katrina Kaif endorsing Lenskart
- In an interview, when asked about his idea of success, Peyush said,
It’s about breaking your own standards every time and bringing an element of joy in the lives of your customers and employees.”
- During an interview, Peyush was asked about the idea behind starting Lenskart. He said,
I wanted to do something on the Internet. My first venture (Searchmycampus), which was centred on college students, wasn’t purely about e-commerce. It was mainly about connecting college students to someone who can provide services to them – very similar to classifieds. The only thing we were not doing was making a transaction on the Internet. The ads on the website earned us revenues. We also built websites for colleges and those who owned hostels. But the model that primarily worked was selling leads to educational institutes and PGs. Classifieds, as a model, was not making money and was not scalable. We wanted to do something that would scale up fast. That is when we shifted gears and came up with the idea of LensKart. We launched LensKart.com with the help of some funding. This left us with huge targets. Gradually, we found that it was not possible to keep Searchmycampus.com live since we would not have been able to attend to customers. We then shut Searchmycampus.com in 2010 as we did not have time and energy to look for someone to sell it off.”