Lenskart Says ₹500 Hustlr Attracts Lakhs, Remains Early

Lenskart said in its Q2 FY27 earnings call that its ₹500 Hustlr glasses initiative has attracted lakhs of people, but remains nascent because profitable logistics, prescription-lens fulfilment and high-volume manufacturing are still being developed. Management views Hustlr as one route to expand its customer base from 30 million to 100 million.

How is Lenskart's ₹500 Hustlr initiative performing?

Lenskart said Hustlr has attracted lakhs of people and called it its most exciting project, while making clear that the initiative is still at an early stage. Management said it took many years to create a pair of high-quality glasses at ₹500, presenting the price point as the result of product and manufacturing work rather than a short-term promotional offer. Lenskart did not disclose Hustlr sales volumes, revenue, conversion rates, repeat purchases or margins.

Lenskart said the customer journey starts online, where users scan their face, and can continue at a store, where they can collect glasses, change the size or add prescription lenses. This combines digital discovery with physical collection and optical customisation. Management said it is learning from customer usage every day and is developing more colours, but did not provide a timetable for expanding the range.

Why does Lenskart see Hustlr as a customer-expansion tool?

Lenskart sees Hustlr as one possible route from 30 million customers to 100 million customers, within management's longer-term ambition to provide vision to 1 billion people. Management described the ₹500 proposition as directionally important for widening access, rather than setting a separately disclosed sales, customer or profitability target for Hustlr. It said the company intends to pursue more initiatives of this kind, whether through Hustlr or another offering.

Lenskart linked affordability with its Tier 2+ expansion, where management said its value creation for customers is greater than in metros and Tier 1 cities. The company said customers in these markets can access night-drive lenses, OWNDAYS lenses and progressive lenses, while Lenskart invests in logistics to reduce delivery times. Management said its Tier 2 stores are not different from Tier 1 stores and that it does not believe customers are differentiating their purchases by city tier.

What must Lenskart solve before Hustlr can scale?

Lenskart said it must make a ₹500 prescription-eyewear proposition work profitably at much higher volumes before it can regard Hustlr as scaled. Management specifically identified logistics to Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, manufacturing large volumes of frames, producing lenses and managing the overall model profitably as unresolved work. The prescription element raises the operational requirement because users can add corrective lenses after choosing a frame.

Lenskart said it is manufacturing a lot more Hustlr products in India, which management presented as part of the effort to support larger volumes. This direction also aligns with its wider attempt to limit imported-input exposure. For India's product-margin line, management said the Indian rupee-to-renminbi rate had moved from about ₹11 or ₹12 to ₹14.2 per renminbi over recent quarters, making foreign exchange its principal cost challenge.

Management said it is addressing currency pressure through greater vendor scale, capacity investment in Thailand, a higher stake in its China joint venture and more production in India. At the consolidated level, Lenskart said nearly 40% of revenue comes from non-Indian-rupee countries, which management described as a natural hedge. It said packaging, logistics and oil-price-related inflation had a minimal effect because its products are third-order derivatives of oil.

Can Lenskart's stores and technology support lower-price access?

Lenskart said its store and technology network can broaden access, but management is prioritising customer experience as it expands. Across India and international markets, the company said it opened 1.8 stores a day in the latest period. In Tier 2+ locations, management said remote optometry enabled Lenskart to open almost one store a day during the quarter, a pace it said was not possible a year earlier.

Lenskart is also piloting Drysh, its artificial-intelligence-assisted eye-testing system, in a few stores. Management said an optometrist might conduct twice as many eye tests under the current model, while Drysh could potentially enable 20 times more tests. It cautioned that the system requires more time to perfect, with optometrists able to log into calls during tests and increasingly focused on complex cases as more data are added to the system.

The technology matters for Hustlr because prescription fulfilment requires eye-testing capacity in addition to frame availability. Lenskart said it has digitised much of the customer journey for progressive lenses, replacing a conventionally manual measurement process. Management also said it is using artificial intelligence to improve eye-test accuracy, although it gave no adoption figure for Drysh or a date for a wider rollout.

How does Hustlr fit Lenskart's wider strategy?

Hustlr is Lenskart's affordability-led initiative, alongside premium lenses, customer-experience experiments and international store growth. Management said international product margin increased to 77% from 75% over the past two to three years, while India's increased to 64% from 63.4%. It attributed the change to more in-house production of frames and lenses, Indian manufacturing and scale-driven purchasing benefits.

International expansion is progressing gradually rather than through a disclosed move into a new large market. Lenskart opened 38 international stores in H1 FY27, compared with 22 in the prior year's H1. Management said it would accelerate as unit economics develop and remains focused on Hyderabad capacity, while stating that, with a base of more than 700 stores, almost all international growth currently comes from same-store sales growth rather than additions.

Lenskart also said it is raising customer experience through its Evolv store pilot, which management said is not designed to create a higher average selling price. In the same call, management said it had begun offering smart glasses in 500 stores and that about 90% of purchasers were buying with a prescription and an eye test. These initiatives show Lenskart pursuing both lower-price access through Hustlr and prescription-led product development across its network.

Conclusion

Lenskart's update indicates that Hustlr has generated initial consumer interest at ₹500, with lakhs of people entering through its online journey, but has not yet established a disclosed operating model at scale. The initiative connects its 30 million-to-100 million customer ambition with a prescription-led retail model, making fulfilment and lens capacity as important as frame pricing.

The next issue to watch is whether Lenskart can make high-volume frame and lens manufacturing, Tier 2 and Tier 3 delivery, and prescription fulfilment profitable. Management said it is increasing Indian production of Hustlr products, investing in Hyderabad capacity and maintaining its FY27 approach of matching last year's store-expansion delivery without diluting customer experience.