Peyush Bansal, the CEO of Lenskart and a judge on Shark Tank India, has been garnering praises from the audience of the show. From promoting talented contestants to his goal-driven investments, everyone has been in love with him since the show began.
In a LinkedIn post, the chief executive officer explained how making decisions for long-term success is important. He wrote that making basic choices do make us feel that we are in the game, even though it may not be the best for the business in the long term.
He wrote about how his own company achieved success after facing several failures.
To win in the long term, leaders have a huge responsibility – the responsibility of constantly making decisions for the LONG TERM, which are never easy because they do not give instant gratification and hence are not the popular ones. They don’t make us look like a ‘hero’. Long term decisions can rarely be taken by obsessing over competition and market and are best taken by keeping the company’s purpose in mind and obsessing about customers.
The co-founder believes that any decision has both, pros and cons, but the companies that are sustainable in the long run are the ones that make decisions for the long term. Here are some of the long term, non-popular, decisions that they took at Lenskart and they worked for them.
In 2015, they decided to open click-and-mortar stores, when the word ‘offline’ meant goodbye to investors, solely because their online visitors wanted to give it a try.
They had shut their three Karts, which gave them 80% of their revenue (GMV) or 80% of their valuation in those days, to focus on Lenskart.
They had over-invested in technology and data across merchandising, AI, AR, supply chain and geolocation. Even though it was way beyond what made sense for an eyewear business, they felt that they were creating surprisingly delightful and reliable customer experiences through it.
He ended the post by writing that their present was already decided based on the decisions they took three years back and their future in three years from now is what they would decide today.
You can see the entire post by Peyush Bansal here:
What a great piece of advice!