AIF That Joked About Skipping Lenskart IPO Clarifies Comment Was ‘In Jest’

Alternative investment fund Persistence Capital, which earlier drew attention for saying it “skipped” the Lenskart IPO, has clarified that its comment was made in jest and that it has not spoken to anyone at the eyewear company.

The fund’s earlier post on X had said, “We are proud to say that we also skipped this IPO. We will not comment on whether we were approached in the first place,” in response to a thread listing funds that skipped the anchor allocation.

Persistence later issued a follow-up, writing, “We want to clarify that our comment was in jest and we have not spoken to anyone at Lenskart. Valuations are one thing but as we have said in many posts before, building a large, profitable business is orders of magnitude more difficult than tweeting or running a fund.”

Earlier, the fund had drawn laughs on social media after replying to an X user who claimed Peyush Bansal personally reached out to Persistence to get them on the cap table. Persistence had responded: “We asked him about LASIK and the call dropped. It was definitely the network.”

Quant Mutual Fund founder and CIO Sandeep Tandon has also been among the loudest sceptics in the inflated primary market. Speaking to NDTV Profit, Tandon warned that the IPO mania is being fuelled by "stupidity," with investors willing to pay valuations that even developed markets won't accept.

"If the US is not willing to pay these companies this sort of valuation, then why should I pay in India? … This is stupidity on our part that we are giving these companies such a high valuation," said Tandon.

Tandon cautioned that the risks are "massive," noting that 60% of newly listed stocks in the past year are trading below their IPO price. According to him, early investors and even the "best brains of the country" are simply cashing out because demand is disproportionately in favour of sellers.

Veteran investor Shankar Sharma echoed the indifference. Speaking to NDTV Profit, he dismissed the offer: "I have no interest in Lenskart IPO… I never met Peyush Bansal."

Sharma also took a swipe at the valuation pegged at around Rs 70,000 crore, where Lenskart is reportedly seeking a price-to-sales multiple of over 10x and a price-to-earnings ratio of 230x. In a previous X post, he compared the pricing to past overheated tech IPOs, suggesting criticism is being brushed aside as an "organised campaign."

This story has been updated to include Persistence Capital’s clarification that its earlier comment about skipping the Lenskart IPO was made in jest and that it has not spoken to anyone at the company.