[Funding alert] Lenskart-backed Neso Brands raises over $100 million

Eyewear house Neso Brands, a Lenskart subsidiary, has raised more than $100 million in its first seed funding round from several investors including KKR, Softbank, Alpha Wave Global and Temasek.

The startup said it will partner with and invest in consumer eyewear brands globally and grow by leveraging the synergies in the Lenskart group.

According to the news release, Neso Brands will house these brands and enable an accelerated global roll-out by giving them access to shared resources, specifically in technology, supply chain, distribution, capital and best practices.

“With this investment in Neso Brands, we want to accelerate our mission of transforming the way people see and experience the world. Consumers want better and better every day and while people’s quality of life has been uplifted through all other lifestyle products such as shoes, apparel and wearables, eyewear products are the same old with no innovation, just more expensive. It is our firm belief that the eyewear brands of today will not be brands of the future. And Neso is our initiative to partner with founders globally to help create eyewear brands of the future”, said, Peyush Bansal, CEO of Lenskart.

It was also announced that Bjorn Bergstrom has joined the founding team as CEO with vast experience from consumer scale-ups, venture capital, and management consulting.

“Today there is a perfect storm in the eyewear industry that makes it ripe for disruption. Consumers have increasingly high demands when it comes to customer experience, branding, and choice, but incumbent players have been unable to keep up. By investing in the most promising new brands in the industry and leveraging centralised resources across technology, manufacturing and distribution, Neso Brands will be uniquely positioned to scale the eyewear brands of the future,” added Bjorn Bergstrom.

Singapore-based Neso Brands was founded in 2022, it is a global eyewear company that enables direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands across the world to become brands of the future.

With general ecommerce adoption and technologies such as AR and AI becoming more mature, it is time for agile eyewear brands to capitalize on these trends and capture market share.

Lenskart claims that it serves over 10 million customers with a presence in 235 Indian cities and Singapore.

Recently it has now entered the Middle East and US as well.

Last month, Lenskart had raised $100 million in new funding round from Alpha Wave Ventures, at $4.3 billion valuation.