Sturdy Tier II demand drives Lenskart; Accessible psychological healthcare for all

Good day,

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

November has additionally progressively develop into a favorite for startups trying to make their first foray into the markets. Even past that, Groww, Lenskart, Pine Labs and PhysicsWallah’s choices this November are a helpful peek into buyers’ preferences in India’s startup ecosystem.

In the meantime, the concept of a assured pension was as soon as unimaginable for tens of millions of girls. Immediately, they kind 48% of all Atal Pension Yojana (APY) beneficiaries in India, reshaping a scheme designed for the nation’s most susceptible employees, based on a Lok Sabha reply on Monday.

In different information, greater than 2.04 lakh personal corporations have shut store within the nation prior to now 5 monetary years, stated Harsh Malhotra, Minister of State within the Ministry of Company Affairs, and Minister of State within the Ministry of Highway Transport and Highways. 

Answering a query on Monday, he stated, the personal firms formally shut down between FY21 and FY25 as a result of amalgamation, conversion, dissolution, or strike-off beneath varied provisions of the Corporations Act, 2013.

Transferring on to the world of know-how, the telecom ministry has privately requested smartphone makers to preload all new gadgets with a state-owned cybersecurity app that can’t be deleted, Reuters reported, citing a authorities order. 

In right this moment’s e-newsletter, we are going to speak about 

• Sturdy Tier II demand drives Lenskart
• Accessible psychological healthcare for all
• Cinema as India’s nationwide language

Right here’s your trivia for right this moment: Which physique within the photo voltaic system has satellites known as Charon, Styx and Nix?

Perception

Sturdy Tier II demand drives Lenskart

 Lenskart is seeing robust traction from its Tier II shops, with a lot better throughput in these shops as in comparison with metro cities, as the corporate’s worth pricing and huge penetration playbook pays off.

Within the six months ended September, Lenskart added 93 shops, taking its whole retailer rely to 791 shops in Tier II and past cities. Furthermore, with related throughput as metros, these shops are additionally accompanied by decrease rental prices in addition to bigger retailer sizes, main to higher profitability.

Growth playbook:

• Lenskart maintains that its speedy retailer enlargement just isn’t cannibalising its gross sales from different shops within the space, clocking similar retailer gross sales development of 15%, in step with the earlier yr. It additionally achieved about 20% adjusted same-pincode gross sales development, helped by volume-driven development.
• The corporate can be banking on tapping into latent demand because the enlargement of eye-testing has develop into central to rising the general vision-care market. Almost half of all prospects examined are present process their first-ever eye examination; it performed 9.3 million eye exams within the first half of FY26.
• Within the first half of FY26, Lenskart noticed its bottomline enhance 19% to Rs 103.4 crore from Rs 86.3 crore, because it appears to focus on greater than 450 internet retailer additions by the top of this monetary yr.

Funding Alert

Startup: Mixx Applied sciences

Quantity: $33M

Spherical: Sequence A

Startup: Finfactor

Quantity: $15M

Spherical: Sequence A

Startup

Accessible psychological healthcare for all

Whilst psychological well being consciousness grows throughout India, entry to psychological well being companies stays scarce. Stigma, scarcity of skilled professionals, and restricted accessible care choices proceed to create obstacles for these looking for assist.

To bridge this hole, Dr Ritika Sinha and Abhineet Kumar based Rocket Well being, which goals to make psychological healthcare accessible, reasonably priced, and stigma-free. The platform brings collectively remedy, psychiatry, prognosis, and a cloud pharmacy in a single confidential, judgment-free house.

Excessive-quality care:

• The platform caters to males, ladies, and the LGBTQIA+ group, providing assist for issues starting from stress, nervousness, and melancholy to ADHD, grief, most cancers care, and relationship challenges.
• To enhance its remedy companies, the corporate has developed an AI-powered voice journaling app known as Rocket Journal, obtainable on iOS. The app supplies guided prompts, temper monitoring, structured check-ins, and a free-form “Rant Mode”. 
• Regardless of being completely bootstrapped, the corporate is worthwhile. With a workforce of 130 professionals throughout India, Rocket Well being has accomplished 2 lakh remedy periods since its inception.

Tradition

Cinema as India’s nationwide language

As a scholar of historical past at Miranda Home, Delhi, Aditi Anand hoped to inform tales of India’s historical past exterior academia, which later led her to check movies at Whistling Woods Worldwide in Mumbai. Her work spans movies like Tere Bin Laden and Paan Singh Tomar that have been well-received. The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir, with actor Dhanush, did nicely internationally however crashed in India.

By way of Little Crimson Automobile Movies, which engages in service manufacturing for worldwide non-fiction tasks, and later, Neelam Studios with Pa Ranjith, Anand has been on a mission to inform genuine, emotional tales by means of the medium of movie. 

Information & updates

• Cyber Monday: US buyers are anticipated to spend $14.2 billion on Cyber Monday, a report from Adobe Analytics predicted, as budget-strained shoppers lap up on-line reductions. Individuals will spend 6.3% extra on-line than a yr earlier on Cyber Monday, which is historically seen because the nation’s largest on-line buying day, marking the finale of the Thanksgiving buying weekend.
• Voice bot: Chinese language tech large ByteDance stated on Monday it’s launching a man-made intelligence voice management software that can debut on a smartphone made by ZTE Corp, earlier than turning into obtainable on telephones from different producers in the end.
• AI partnership: Nvidia on Monday introduced it has bought $2 billion of Synopsys’ widespread inventory as a part of a strategic partnership to speed up computing and synthetic intelligence engineering options.

Which physique within the photo voltaic system has satellites known as Charon, Styx and Nix?

Reply: Pluto

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