Lenskart building a global eyewear brand; Inside Karan Johar’s dating startup

Hello,

What a stunning rally!

Started in 1993 with a vision to bring 3D graphics to gaming, NVIDIA has now cemented its place at the centre of the global AI boom. The company on Wednesday hit a mind-boggling $5 trillion in market value. 

The growth has been remarkable, with the company adding another trillion dollars in less than four months after surpassing the $4 trillion mark.

Meanwhile, Jensen Huang’s company is reportedly giving an ‘AI Midas touch’ to Nokia by committing to buy roughly $1 billion of newly-issued Nokia shares. Nokia has agreed to integrate NVIDIA’s accelerated computing into its next-generation radio access networks.

Elsewhere, San Francisco startup Mem0 raised $24 million in a combined seed and Series A funding as it seeks to solve one of generative AI’s thorniest problems–building a reliable memory layer for AI agents and LLMs. 

Lastly, now that you know YourStory is back with its flagship event TechSparks, aren’t you curious about the speakers for this edition? We won’t keep that a secret from our dear readers! 

With the theme “India 2030: Powered by AI”, the event is bringing leadership from Groq, Swiggy, Sarvam AI, and Nothing: It just gets bigger and bolder!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Lenskart building a global eyewear brand
• Changing the way India sleeps
• Inside Karan Johar’s dating startup

Here’s your trivia for today: Writer Stanley Martin Leiber is better known by which professional name?

Interview

Lenskart building a global eyewear brand

Peyush Bansal, Co-founder and CEO of Indian eyewear chain Lenskart, recalls being in Singapore ahead of the launch of the company’s first store there in 2019. “I was cleaning the store myself. We were very worried, and log keh rahe the hum nahin batayenge ki ye Indian brand hai (people were saying not to reveal it was an Indian brand),” he says, in a conversation with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO, YourStory. 

“Eventually, we saw that if you do a good job of customer experience, people don’t care. Abhi (now) people care about authenticity.” Lenskart today has 65 stores in Singapore. Watch the video here.

From India to the world:

• Lenskart today runs an omnichannel business that operates over 2,700 stores in over 500 cities. Over 2,000 of the stores are in India, and in recent years, it has ventured into international markets such as Japan, Southeast Asia, and West Asia.
• The Lenskart team was clear from the start that they didn’t want to do anything for the short term. “We wanted to build an Amazon of eyewear,” Bansal says.
• How did Lenskart ensure that the scaling-up process didn’t derail its journey to becoming an international brand? “If I can give you a non-theoretical answer for it, it is technology,” Bansal says.

Insights

Changing the way India sleeps

From a modest factory acquisition in Coimbatore to 82 exclusive stores across India, Peps Industries has transformed how Indians think about rest, comfort, and well-being—turning sleep into a lifestyle priority rather than an afterthought.

“For us, the journey has always gone beyond selling mattresses. It’s about health, well-being, and living fully awake. Every design is research-driven and ergonomically crafted to help people wake up refreshed,” G. Shankar Ramm, Managing Director of Peps Industries, says.

Sound sleep:

• Today, Peps holds 35–40% of India’s organised spring mattress market, manufacturing over 3 lakh mattresses annually. Its diverse portfolio—spanning over 13,000 SKUs priced between Rs 15,000 and Rs 1.8 lakh—caters to both value-conscious and premium buyers. 
• It introduced a memory foam–backed Spine Guard mattress, designed for back support, and Organica, which it claims is India’s first 100% comfort organic mattress made with natural latex and organic cotton.
• In FY25, Peps grew at a CAGR of 25–33%, crossing Rs 500 crore in revenue, with over Rs 400 crore coming from mattresses, and the rest from accessories such as pillows, sheets, and sofas.

Startup

Inside Karan Johar’s dating startup

In the age of endless swipes and fleeting connections, finding genuine love online has started to feel like chasing a mirage. Dating apps have made it easier than ever to meet new people—but harder to form real, lasting relationships. For women, safety and authenticity remain constant concerns; for men, visibility and meaningful engagement are often elusive.

That’s the gap Elevn aims to close. Co-founded by filmmaker Karan Johar, Raghav Chaturvedi, and Ramya Chaturvedi, Elevn is reimagining how Indians date—bringing trust, balance, and authenticity back into the equation.

News & updates

• AI tech: Amazon said on Wednesday it has launched its compute cluster project called Rainier, and added that artificial intelligence firm Anthropic will use more than a million chips of the infrastructure by the end of the year.
• Mixed report: Boeing said its jetliner deliveries drove it back into cash-positive territory for the first time in nearly two years, but it took a $4.9 billion charge on additional delays of its long-awaited 777X wide-body plane.
• Wealth fund: Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund—the largest of its kind in the world—on Wednesday reported a 5.8% return during the third quarter, powered by strong stock market gains and AI optimism.

Writer Stanley Martin Leiber is better known by which professional name? 

Answer: Stan Lee

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