Shark Tank India: Peyush Bansal recalls how a meeting with Bill Gates changed his life

A journey of over 45 days has come to an end! Shark Tank India, which has been attracting interest from the audiences, aired its finale episode on Friday. 

While close to 200 people pitched their business ideas, the last episode had a familiar name making his pitch. One of the Sharks, Peyush Bansal, gave a pitch for his company, recalling memories from a decade back when he was starting his company Lenskart.

He recalled working with Microsoft in the USA and a meeting with founder Bill Gates making him take a big step for a revolution. Bansal's thought behind the 'revolution' was that a major percentage of Indians, despite eyesight issues, were not wearing glasses.

Shark Peyush Bansal pitches for Lenskart on Shark Tank India finale 

Peyush Bansal started his pitch, "In India, there is 50 per cent of people who need glasses, but only 1/4th of this section have glasses. That means 40 crore Indians need glasses. "

"In the world, 23.5 crore kids need glasses, but they don't have it. A worker has increase his productivity by 25 per cent and income by 30 per cent only through vision correction. Globally, the loss for lack of vision correction is $227 billion," he added.

He said, "So me, and many experts feel that the biggest health ailment in India is vision correction. 1 out of 3 India can't see properly." 

"Lenskart is not a company, it is a mission to revolutionise vision correction. To make 50 per cent of India wear glasses. In the same way, Maruti provided the pleasure of owning a car to Indians, we wish that we can give the pleasure of vision to every Indian," concluded his statement.

Peyush Bansal's life story and how meeting with Bill Gates became turning point 

Bansal sought Rs 1 crore investment for 1 per cent equity from the Sharks.

He was then asked by the other Sharks about the idea behind his mission and he then said, "I was born and brought up in Delhi, at Don Bosco School, engineering and I tried hard to enter IIT, but fortunately or unfortunately, I could make it. I then went to study at McGill University in Canada, where I studied Electrical Engineering and then I went to Microsoft in Seattle."

"And then one day I met Bill Gates, who used to invite interns to his home on a beach. I really felt he had done something big. I could not imagine my life without Excel, and someone told me they had 50,000 employees for the company. I did not want to be 1 in 50,000," he said.

Bansal shared, "And I felt that I was making lives better for people who already have good lives. So I came to India, and didn't have a plan. Even my parents felt that I had left a good job."

"I had established a College Classified platform and even had 30 people, but there did not seem any revolution with it," he said.

The other Sharks poked fun at his pitch, asking if he had been inspired for his company name from Flipkart, and cross-questioned him on his failure in a previous company, lack of inclination for sales and more. 

Namita Thapar offered him the deal with 50 cent equity, and the others then offered lesser equity, before the deal was cracked by Aman Gupta for 5 per cent equity in fun-filled re-imagination of the deal.