Strong Tier II demand drives Lenskart; Accessible mental healthcare for all

Hello,

UPI recorded its second-highest month of activity in November, holding just below October’s festival-driven peak. The system processed 20.47 billion transactions worth Rs 26.32 lakh crore, making it the second-busiest month of 2025. 

November has also gradually become a favourite for startups looking to make their first foray into the markets. Even beyond that, Groww, Lenskart, Pine Labs and PhysicsWallah’s offerings this November are a useful peek into investors’ preferences in India’s startup ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the idea of a guaranteed pension was once unimaginable for millions of women. Today, they form 48% of all Atal Pension Yojana (APY) beneficiaries in India, reshaping a scheme designed for the country’s most vulnerable workers, according to a Lok Sabha reply on Monday.

In other news, more than 2.04 lakh private firms have shut shop in the country in the past five financial years, said Harsh Malhotra, Minister of State in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, and Minister of State in the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. 

Answering a question on Monday, he said, the private companies formally shut down between FY21 and FY25 due to amalgamation, conversion, dissolution, or strike-off under various provisions of the Companies Act, 2013.

Moving on to the world of technology, the telecom ministry has privately asked smartphone makers to preload all new devices with a state-owned cybersecurity app that cannot be deleted, Reuters reported, citing a government order. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Strong Tier II demand drives Lenskart
• Accessible mental healthcare for all
• Cinema as India's national language

Here’s your trivia for today: Which body in the solar system has satellites called Charon, Styx and Nix?

Insight

Strong Tier II demand drives Lenskart

 Lenskart is seeing strong traction from its Tier II stores, with much better throughput in these stores as compared to metro cities, as the company's value pricing and wide penetration playbook pays off.

In the six months ended September, Lenskart added 93 stores, taking its total store count to 791 stores in Tier II and beyond towns. Moreover, with similar throughput as metros, these stores are also accompanied by lower rental costs as well as larger store sizes, leading to better profitability.

Expansion playbook:

• Lenskart maintains that its rapid store expansion is not cannibalising its sales from other stores in the area, clocking same store sales growth of 15%, consistent with the previous year. It also achieved about 20% adjusted same-pincode sales growth, helped by volume-driven growth.
• The company is also banking on tapping into latent demand as the expansion of eye-testing has become central to growing the overall vision-care market. Nearly half of all customers tested are undergoing their first-ever eye exam; it conducted 9.3 million eye tests in the first half of FY26.
• In the first half of FY26, Lenskart saw its bottomline improve 19% to Rs 103.4 crore from Rs 86.3 crore, as it looks to target more than 450 net store additions by the end of this financial year.

Funding Alert

Startup: Mixx Technologies

Amount: $33M

Round: Series A

Startup: Finfactor

Amount: $15M

Round: Series A

Startup

Accessible mental healthcare for all

Even as mental health awareness grows across India, access to mental health services remains scarce. Stigma, shortage of trained professionals, and limited accessible care options continue to create barriers for those seeking support.

To bridge this gap, Dr Ritika Sinha and Abhineet Kumar founded Rocket Health, which aims to make mental healthcare accessible, affordable, and stigma-free. The platform brings together therapy, psychiatry, diagnosis, and a cloud pharmacy in one confidential, judgment-free space.

High-quality care:

• The platform caters to men, women, and the LGBTQIA+ community, offering support for concerns ranging from stress, anxiety, and depression to ADHD, grief, cancer care, and relationship challenges.
• To complement its therapy services, the company has developed an AI-powered voice journaling app called Rocket Journal, available on iOS. The app provides guided prompts, mood tracking, structured check-ins, and a free-form “Rant Mode”. 
• Despite being entirely bootstrapped, the company is profitable. With a team of 130 professionals across India, Rocket Health has completed 2 lakh therapy sessions since its inception.

Culture

Cinema as India's national language

As a student of history at Miranda House, Delhi, Aditi Anand hoped to tell stories of India’s history outside academia, which later led her to study films at Whistling Woods International in Mumbai. Her work spans films like Tere Bin Laden and Paan Singh Tomar that were well-received. The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir, with actor Dhanush, did well internationally but crashed in India.

Through Little Red Car Films, which engages in service production for international non-fiction projects, and later, Neelam Studios with Pa Ranjith, Anand has been on a mission to tell authentic, emotional stories through the medium of film. 

News & updates

• Cyber Monday: US shoppers are expected to spend $14.2 billion on Cyber Monday, a report from Adobe Analytics predicted, as budget-strained consumers lap up online discounts. Americans will spend 6.3% more online than a year earlier on Cyber Monday, which is traditionally seen as the country's biggest online shopping day, marking the finale of the Thanksgiving shopping weekend.
• Voice bot: Chinese tech giant ByteDance said on Monday it is launching an artificial intelligence voice control tool that will debut on a smartphone made by ZTE Corp, before becoming available on phones from other manufacturers in due course.
• AI partnership: Nvidia on Monday announced it has purchased $2 billion of Synopsys’ common stock as part of a strategic partnership to accelerate computing and artificial intelligence engineering solutions.

Which body in the solar system has satellites called Charon, Styx and Nix?

Answer: Pluto

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