Gen AI, agentic AI boosting productivity 10X at Lenskart, says CEO Peyush Bansal

Lenskart co-founder and CEO Peyush Bansal

For eyewear retailer Lenskart, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer an experimental layer sitting alongside its retail business -- it is increasingly becoming the operating backbone that allows the company to expand store networks, process more eye tests and improve fulfilment without a commensurate rise in costs, cofounder and CEO Peyush Bansal said.

“Our early AI bets are paying off now,” Bansal told Moneycontrol in an interview, referring to investments made years ago in analytics and data platforms. “At that time the power of AI wasn’t even close to what it is today -- but those investments are paying out now.”

Those investments included capabilities built through Tango Eye, focused on store analytics, and more recently, GeoIQ, which worked on applying data science to location intelligence and expansion planning. Originally aimed at improving store productivity and site selection, those systems have become far more powerful with advances in generative AI.

“What that investment could do was 'X' till last year — now it is able to do 10X,” he said, adding that a large part of recent operational gains can be attributed to what “GenAI or agentic AI is able to do.”

Lenskart recently posted a sharp surge in its fiscal third quarter earnings, with consolidated net profit jumping over 70 times year-on-year to Rs 131 crore. Revenue from operations rose 38.3 percent on-year to Rs 2,307.7 crore in Q3 FY26, as the firm continued to expand its offline retail footprint and grow its eye tests.

“We are seeing tons of operating leverage...Despite us opening almost 2X more stores than we opened last year, we still saw operating leverage,” Bansal said.

AI embedded into logistics and service delivery

The company says AI-led optimisation is already reshaping execution across its network. Lenskart has expanded next-day delivery coverage to more than 60 cities from roughly 30 a year earlier, enabled by algorithmic routing and centralised fulfilment.

“Routing algorithms cannot be linear—they have to be intelligent,” Bansal said.

Operational processes such as warranty servicing have also become faster and more cost-efficient on the back of AI advancements. “We are able to process them much faster…at a lower cost,” he added.

AI-assisted workflows are also helping Lenskart scale diagnostics, which sit at the centre of its strategy to grow the eyewear market by bringing in first-time users rather than relying solely on replacement demand.

“We cannot do these many eye tests if it wasn’t co-piloted… because we are recording eye tests and learning,” Bansal said.

Supporting expansion into smaller cities

The technology layer is playing a key role as Lenskart deepens its presence beyond metros. In India, in Q3FY26, Lenskart added 169 net new stores, a 160 percent increase versus 65 net new stores added in Q3FY25. Of the 169 new stores, 71 new stores, or 41 percent, were opened only in Tier 2 and beyond markets.

Moneycontrol reported earlier that new Lenskart stores in Tier-2 and beyond regions were generating higher revenue than those in metros, highlighting strong demand in underpenetrated markets where access to organised optical retail remains limited.

Bansal said AI is helping the company understand these markets with far greater precision than traditional retail analytics allowed.

“You today can understand much better—not in singular vectors but in hundreds of vectors—what consumers are buying,” he said. “We are not talking about five or ten variables anymore. We are talking about thousands of variables.”

“AI allows you to put brains in Tier-2 also… your ability to personalise goes to the next level,” he added, referring to localised merchandising and inventory decisions.

These inputs extend well beyond traditional sales or transaction data. “You can see what people are wearing on Instagram. You can understand what kind of movies and content get released there. You can understand what kind of influencers they follow,” he said, explaining that such signals help the company identify emerging style preferences, map localised demand patterns and decide which frames, collections or price mixes to push in specific markets rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all retail approach.

A technology layer beneath physical expansion

Lenskart’s broader strategy continues to combine aggressive store rollouts, vertically integrated manufacturing and growing eye-test penetration to expand the category itself. But as the company scales, Bansal noted that the differentiator will increasingly lie beneath the storefront.

The company is effectively moving from being seen purely as an optical retailer to operating as a technology-enabled vision care platform—using years of accumulated data, diagnostics and AI models to grow faster without proportionately increasing costs, even as it continues to expand its physical network.