A Lenskart Solutions Ltd. store in Mumbai, India, on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025.
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Shares of SoftBank-backed eyewear retailer Lenskart Solutions had a weak debut Monday, slipping as much as 11% below their issue price before recovering in early trade.
Lenskart shares were last trading 0.05% higher at 402.2 Indian rupees ($4.53), compared with its IPO issue price of 402 rupees.
The tepid start contrasts with home service startup Urban Company‘s blockbuster listing in September, which rose over 60% on its debut.
Lenskart’s $828 million IPO was among India’s most anticipated this year, drawing bids more than 28 times the shares on offer. Institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals led the demand, while retail interest was relatively muted.
Softbank-backed Lenskart IPO gets a tepid response from investors
Many smaller investors have been chasing short-term gains by “jumping from one IPO to another,” Bhavesh Shah, head of investment banking at Equirus Capital, told CNBC. This churn from one IPO to another is creating selling pressure on the listing day, he added.
A study by India’s market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, found that 54% of IPO Shares allotted to investors — excluding anchor investors — are sold within a week. Between April 2021 and December 2024, retail investors sold 50% of the shares allotted to them by value within a week of listing, and 70% of shares by value within a year, the study revealed.
Valuing vision?
Lenskart’s IPO was a hotly debated topic on social media in India last week, with some analysts arguing that the issue “overvalued” the company.
“The IPO price valued Lenkart at a [price–earnings ratio] of over 200 times and even then, most of the company’s earnings for [the financial year] 25 were derived from non-core business operations,” said Devina Mehra, Founder of investment firm First Global.
Others defended the growth prospects of one of India’s most storied startups. Sarthak Ahuja, an investment banker, highlighted in a social media post that several marquee institutional investors participated early in Lenskart’s offering.
Some of the top institutional investors in the Lenskart IPO include the Government of Singapore (2.97%) and global investors like BlackRock and Fidelity, which bought shares through multiple funds.