Page Reader AI | Lenskart built its empire on franchisees. Now it’s battling them in courts

Lenskart built its empire on franchisees. Now it’s battling them in courts

Lenskart, India's largest eyewear brand, faces legal battles with its franchisees who accuse the company of unfair practices and financial manipulation.

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Lenskart is heading to the stock market amid a bitter battle with its franchise store owners.

It’s a fight that has been simmering for years, but now it’s boiling over into courtrooms, with franchise store owners accusing India’s largest eyewear brand of squeezing them out, opaque accounting practices, and straight-up fraud.

The scale of this dispute is striking.

Lenskart operates over 2,500 stores, yet only around 300 are still run by franchisees—that’s just around 12%. Back in 2023, the share was close toThe KenLenskart’s CEO and chief people officer Peyush Bansal has a people problem 30%. The Ken spoke to 18 current and former franchise owners, who together ran more than 50 stores. Nearly all of them point to a common gripe: Lenskart keeps them in the dark about their own store finances and then opens company-run outlets right next door.

All of that frustration has now turned into legal action.

A group of franchisees (now former) is preparing to ask the Karnataka High Court to reopen an investigation into Lenskart. Their claim: the company has been playing accounting tricks to mess with the franchisee’s commission earnings.

Why “reopen”? Because it’s not a new fight.

Last October, a former franchise owner, Soma Shekhar, teamed up with four others—Prajwal TP, Rakesh G, Vinayak Patil, and Raghvendra Vecham—to file a police complaint in Mysuru. Between them, they had run 13 Lenskart stores in the state. Their allegation: Lenskart’s top executives had manipulated the company’s accounting software to mess with their stores’ finances.

Earlier that year, Patil had already filed a similar police complaint in Hubballi (another city in Karnataka), which eventually led to a suit for an injunction at a Mysuru sessions court against Lenskart. By October, the FIR was handed over to the Economic Offences Wing, which specialises in fraud, misappropriation, and other financial crimes.

But Lenskart was not one to let this go. In January, it got a stay order from the Karnataka High Court, putting the investigation on hold—for now. But the former franchise owners aren’t backing down. They want the court to lift the stay and let the investigation continue.