SBI Mutual Fund recently invested Rs 100 crore in the company at a valuation of about Rs 67,762 crore. CEO Peyush Bansal had earlier sold shares worth Rs 90 crore to DMart promoter Radhakishan Damani at the same valuation.
The company turned profitable only in FY25, reporting a net profit of Rs 297 crore. However, its Rs 70,000-crore valuation at the upper end of the price band implies a steep 237-times price-to-earnings ratio. This has raised concerns among analysts and market experts.
Many experts also outlined that the company, backed by SoftBank, Temasek, KKR and Alpha Wave, was valued at $6.1 billion by Fidelity in its April 2025 portfolio update.
Moreover, a news report from July is circulating online, in which it was suggested that Bansal took a Rs 200 crore loan just three months before the IPO to buy Lenskart shares at a Rs 8,500 crore valuation. Now, in November, he is selling part of his stake to public and institutional investors at nearly nine times that valuation.
Veteran investor Shankar Sharma, Founder of GQuant Investech, minced no words while talking about the Initial Public Offering (IPO) market, labelling India’s IPO market as the “dumbest in the history of IPO markets”, driven by “dumb money” from retail investors.
His comments came as eyewear retailer Lenskart Solutions garnered a blockbuster response for its upcoming IPO, receiving bids of around Rs 68,000 crore from its anchor investors on Thursday. The anchor book saw participation from around 70 marquee investors.
