Lenskart Joins Forces with Ajna Lens to Shape the Future of AI-Powered XR Glasses
Peyush Bansal’s Lenskart, the eyewear powerhouse, has made a bold move to advance the future of smart eyewear through a strategic investment in Ajna Lens — a Mumbai-based deeptech company specialising in AI-driven extended reality (XR) glasses. Although the investment amount has not been disclosed, industry observers view this as a major step that highlights Lenskart’s dedication to integrating cutting-edge technology into mainstream eyewear products.
Established in 2014 by Abhijit Patil, Abhishek Tomar, and Pankaj Raut, Ajna Lens is one of the leading players in India’s immersive technology landscape. The company boasts a robust reputation for creating proprietary hardware and software platforms based on spatial computing, computer vision, and XR technologies. Its flagship offering, the AjnaXR mixed-reality headset, received the highly coveted CES Innovation Award in 2023, solidifying its position as a potential innovator on the international front. Ajna Lens solutions have gained traction in enterprise, education, and defense segments where immersive technology is increasingly helping close the physical and digital worlds.
For Lenskart, this move expands on its earlier foray into smart eyewear. The company launched Phonic, its own audio-enabled smart glasses, in December 2024 as a pilot in the lifestyle tech segment. By partnering with Ajna Lens, Lenskart aims to leapfrog to more advanced, AI-integrated smart eyewear that could cater to both lifestyle and enterprise markets.
“This investment marks the next chapter in our Smart Glass journey, which began with the launch of Phonic, our audio glasses, in December 2024,” said Peyush Bansal, co-founder and chief executive officer of Lenskart. “As the smart glasses category scales rapidly, our partnership with Ajna Lens strategically positions us to accelerate product innovation in this space.”
The potential for growth is clear. The global smart glasses market was valued at around US$6.6 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach US$29 billion by 2032, according to research firm Market.us, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 17%. Tech giants like Apple, Meta, and Google have made similar moves into XR-enabled wearables, while startups worldwide are racing to make smart glasses more consumer-friendly and affordable.
Lenskart’s deep expertise in frame design, lightweight engineering, and mass-scale production gives it an edge in solving one of the biggest challenges for smart eyewear: creating glasses that balance advanced technology with everyday comfort and style. Bansal has previously spoken about how consumers are unlikely to adopt smart glasses that look or feel clunky — a pain point Lenskart hopes to address through this collaboration.
The company says it plans to leverage Ajna Lens’ advanced spatial computing and AI vision technologies while bringing its own large-scale manufacturing capabilities into play. The vision is to create consumer-grade smart glasses that are not only functional but also stylish, affordable, and accessible to a broad demographic, blending seamlessly with Lenskart’s large product portfolio.
The timing is significant. Lenskart has grown rapidly from an online-first eyewear startup to India’s largest eyewear retailer, operating more than 2,500 stores across India and Southeast Asia, along with a robust online presence that reaches millions of customers every month. Its annual production capacity — estimated at 25 million frames and 30 to 40 million lenses — gives it the manufacturing muscle to scale new innovations quickly.
At the same time, the Gurugram-based company is in the midst of an ambitious push to go public. In June 2025, it converted itself into a public limited company, an essential step toward listing on Indian stock exchanges. Reports suggest Lenskart is eyeing a $1 billion IPO at a valuation of around $10 billion, nearly double its $5 billion valuation at the time of its last funding round in 2023. That round included heavyweight investors like Singapore’s sovereign fund Temasek and Fidelity Investments, underlining investor confidence in Lenskart’s growth story.
Analysts view the Ajna Lens investment as a strategic move that could add long-term value to the company’s portfolio at a time when tech integration is becoming central to the eyewear category. As global consumer interest in wearables and spatial computing grows, having an in-house capability to develop AI and XR-powered smart eyewear could differentiate Lenskart in a crowded market.
In the meantime, Lenskart will gain access to Ajna Lens’s massive manufacturing scale, retail reach, and rich insights into the eyewear consumer. The two firms aim to tap new use cases for smart eyewear — ranging from experiential education tools and virtual collaboration to daily productivity and entertainment — together.
With India’s deeptech ecosystem coming of age and with increasing global momentum for immersive technology solutions, this collaboration will probably attract close attention from both investors and peers in industry. As Bansal said, “this is just the next chapter” in a path that can turn not only the look of eyewear but also what it does for us in our day-to-day lives.
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