Serving to shoppers discover the proper glasses is a booming international enterprise, spawning giants like Warby Parker within the U.S. and Lenskart in India. Within the Center East, this market is producing its personal rising powerhouse: Eyewa.
Eyewa, based mostly in Dubai and Riyadh, sells a variety of eyewear merchandise, together with prescription glasses, sun shades, blue gentle glasses, and phone lenses, via a DTC e-commerce and retail platform throughout 5 Mideast markets.
Now, the corporate has raised $100 million Sequence C spherical. The spherical, led by international development investor Basic Atlantic, brings Eyewa’s complete funding to $130 million since its 2017 launch.
Based by Anass Boumediene, Mehdi Oudghiri, and Abdullah AlRugaib – all former Bain & Firm consultants – Eyewa initially entered the eyewear market as an e-commerce retailer for third-party manufacturers. Nonetheless, the corporate quickly launched its personal manufacturers after figuring out unmet wants within the Center East.
Between 2015 and 2017, co-CEOs Boumediene and Oudghiri led Foodpanda’s regional operations underneath Rocket Web and DeliveryHero possession. Their expertise scaling the food-delivery enterprise – which they declare to have grown 50x in three years and brought to profitability – motivated them to begin their very own firm.
“After our time with Foodpanda, we had been hooked on entrepreneurship and knew we wished to begin one thing of our personal,” shared co-CEO Boumediene on a name with TechCrunch. “We wished to seek out the correct downside to resolve, so we began exploring concepts and evaluating challenges we noticed throughout completely different areas.”
From delivering meals to promoting eyeglasses
The founders brainstormed 87 concepts, and after filtering choices with an inventory of 15 standards and conducting a six-month analysis, they landed on the eyewear market, a vastly completely different trade from meals supply.
They found demand for eyewear was rising considerably, however the provide wasn’t maintaining. Myopia was rising within the area’s comparatively younger inhabitants (one research reveals that the prevalence of myopia and excessive myopia within the UAE is round 27%). As well as, native eyewear firms had been centered on in-store gross sales, not often did any e-commerce, and their manufacturers weren’t reasonably priced or tailor-made to the mass market.
With no prior expertise within the eyewear trade, Eyewa began by promoting eyewear manufacturers, together with Ray-Ban, Gucci, Prada, and Johnson & Johnson, on-line for 2 years.
By then, it had sufficient information on buyer habits, together with cart additions, web site searches, and buy patterns, to design and launch its personal in-house manufacturers. Now, Eyewa has 9 proprietary manufacturers for numerous preferences, from older clients looking for practical eyewear to youthful consumers searching for fashionable choices. At present, 96% of Eyewa’s income comes from these in-house manufacturers, which, in response to the corporate, has been key to holding costs reasonably priced for the mass market, together with smaller cities throughout Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman.
Eyewa markets its eyeglasses, even the prescription ones, as style equipment, not like conventional retailers, who are likely to deal with clients as sufferers, promoting costly manufacturers like Prada in sterile settings.
“We form of circled the way in which we take a look at the eyewear expertise, the place style is the factor that clients actually care about from a selection perspective,” co-CEO Oudghiri commented on the decision. “In order that’s what we concentrate on within the retail expertise and the well being care side, we deal with it. We’re going to offer you very high-quality lenses and exhaustive eye exams, and we’ll just remember to have the very best well being high quality for the eyewear that you simply purchase. However what we wish to push within the retail expertise is the style.”
Eyewa additionally retains costs low: Within the Gulf states, Eyewa’s entry-level eyeglasses, together with lenses, are priced round $100, roughly 50% lower than related merchandise out there in conventional shops.
Scaling its omnichannel expertise
As an e-commerce platform, Eyewa completely served clients who already had prescriptions and knew the glasses they wished. However that’s not precisely a mass market. So it started opening retail shops in December 2020 as Covid lockdowns slowly lifted.
The transfer allowed it to succeed in a broader buyer base, as most eyewear customers nonetheless choose in-store experiences to attempt on frames and full their purchases. This additionally allowed Eyewa to personal the complete buyer journey by offering eye examinations, which might solely occur in bodily shops outfitted with optometrists and examination rooms.
Eyewa raised a $21 million Sequence B from a number of traders, together with Nuwa Capital and Endeavor Catalyst, in 2021 to scale this effort, and since then, it has grown to 150 shops, all wholly owned and operated — no franchises. The startup, which now employs 1,300 individuals, claims to be the most important eyewear model in Saudi Arabia by retailer depend and the fastest-growing eyewear retailer globally.
To place this development into perspective: international benchmarks like Warby Parker took seven years to develop from their first retailer to 100, and Lenskart in India took about six years to attain the identical milestone.
“We’re the quickest rising globally, however even throughout classes within the GCC, no different retailer in every other vertical did one retailer to 100 in lower than 4 years. So we actually executed tremendous quick,” Boumediene remarked.
Boumediene declined to reveal how a lot eyewear the corporate has offered since its launch however did say Eyewa is worthwhile and rising at over 50% year-over-year in revenues. The corporate intends so as to add at the very least 100 extra shops throughout six international locations, together with Qatar, its subsequent market, in 2025; it’ll additionally open a manufacturing facility and success centre in Riyadh subsequent quarter, mentioned the chief.
With this spherical, Basic Atlantic joins a rising listing of U.S. traders deepening their presence within the GCC by backing startups and establishing native groups, after receiving capital from the area’s sovereign wealth funds.
“It appears there’s a number of newfound international curiosity within the area. We’ve had the VC ecosystem develop within the final 5 years, and lots of investments occur in early stage,” commented Mehdi. “However it’s nice to see now extra established development and personal fairness funds beginning to take a look at the area and the likes of Basic Atlantic coming, and hopefully many extra that can comply with.”
Badwa Capital and Turmeric Capital additionally participated within the spherical.
