Mission Brief: Lead the Transformation of Lenskart into a Cult Global Brand
This is a high-impact, founder-proximate leadership role focused on one thing: taking Lenskart from a well-known eyewear company to an iconic global brand. You will be the architect responsible for transforming how the world perceives, talks about, and emotionally connects with Lenskart — moving us from category leader to cultural phenomenon.
Your mission is to bridge the gap between cutting-edge AI-powered marketing and exponential global brand growth. You will define and deliver the system that ensures we show up with the right story, in the right format, in the right culture, at the right moment — maximising brand love, customer acquisition, and revenue impact globally.
Lenskart is already a $1 billion revenue company. 2,500+ stores across India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Japan, and the US. 40M+ customers. A vertically integrated, tech-first model that designs, manufactures, and delivers eyewear end-to-end. Now we're going after the next 10x.
This role will be based in India and will require relocation to India
🔑 Core Mandate: Brand Transformation & Business Growth
1. Build a Cult Global Brand (The Builder's Focus)
Brand Visionary: Own the strategic vision and execution for taking Lenskart from a known eyewear brand to an iconic, cult brand — one that creates virality, drives style statements, and makes eyewear a fashion-first category globally.
Portfolio Architecture: Define and evolve brand positioning for Lenskart and its portfolio brands (John Jacobs, Aqualens) across India, SEA, Middle East, Japan, and the US — ensuring local cultural resonance without sacrificing global brand coherence.
Cultural Ownership: Build a brand that doesn't just sell eyewear but owns the conversation around vision, style, and self-expression for the next billion consumers. Think of brands that went from functional to viral to iconic — that's the playbook you'll write, except for eyewear and at a global scale.
2. Social-First, Culture-First Content Engine (The Distribution Focus)
Platform-Native Creative: Build and scale a content engine natively built for TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and whatever platform emerges next. No repurposed TV ads. No committee-approved creative. Platform-native, thumb-stopping, culture-shaping content that makes people hit share.
Creator Ecosystem: Build creator and influencer ecosystems across every market — from mega-influencers to nano-creators, from artists to athletes — with a programmatic, data-driven approach to partnerships.
Community-Led Growth: Make Lenskart a brand that Gen Z and Millennials don't just buy from — they talk about, create with, remix, and feel part of. Crack high-impact brand partnerships and drive cultural events that put Lenskart at the centre of conversations.
3. AI-Powered Marketing — 10x Faster, 10x Smarter (The Leverage Focus)
Non-Negotiable: This is not a role for someone who is "exploring AI." You will leverage AI better than anyone else in the industry and build a marketing function where AI is the operating system, not a tool.
AI Creative Engine: Deploy generative AI to produce content at a scale and speed no traditional team can match — dynamic creative variants, AI-generated ad copy, personalised visual assets, and multi-market campaign launches running simultaneously.
Intelligent Targeting & Personalisation: Build AI-powered audience segmentation, predictive targeting, and real-time personalisation systems — so every customer sees the most relevant message at the most relevant moment, automatically.
AI-Driven Performance Systems: Implement automated bidding strategies, AI-generated creative optimisation loops, and LLM-powered campaign intelligence that continuously learns and improves ROAS without manual intervention.
Tech-Enabled Marketing Stack: Own the architecture of a world-class marketing tech stack — CDP, AI-native attribution, experimentation platforms, virtual try-on, computer vision for product discovery — all wired to a single source of truth.
Force Multiplier Mindset: We are not building a 200-person marketing department. We are building a 20-person AI-powered marketing machine that operates at the output of one 100x its size.
4. Numbers-Driven Performance & Growth (The Business Focus)
P&L Ownership: Own the full marketing P&L and business plan. You're not just a creative leader — you're accountable for CAC, LTV, ROAS, and incrementality across every channel and market.
Experimentation at Scale: Drive a relentless test-and-learn culture. We expect 100+ experiments a quarter, not 10. Be entrepreneurial and frugal — find the highest-leverage way to drive outsized results with lean resources.
Omnichannel Integration: Drive integrated online-to-offline marketing that bridges digital channels with 2,500+ physical stores, creating a seamless consumer journey from first impression to in-store conversion.
5. Multi-Country Playbook & Omnichannel Scale (The Global Focus)
Localised GTM: Develop localised go-to-market strategies for each market while maintaining a unified global brand playbook. What works in India won't copy-paste to Dubai or Tokyo — and you get that intuitively.
International Expansion: Initially crack India deeply, then expand your remit to lead brand-building across Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Mid-to-long-term, there's an opportunity to relocate to Singapore or Dubai to lead international markets on the ground.
New Product & Category Launches: Own the marketing engine for new product introductions — from category creation moments to viral launch campaigns — ensuring rapid cultural adoption and minimal time-to-love.
The Essentials
Experience: 10+ years in marketing, with at least 3–5 years in a senior leadership role at a high-growth D2C or consumer-tech brand. You've scaled at least one iconic brand — something that went viral, became a style statement, and captured cultural attention.
AI & Technical Fluency: You've built or managed an AI-native marketing stack. Not experimented with AI for copy — actually deployed AI systems at scale for creative, targeting, or personalisation. You're comfortable talking to engineers about APIs, you understand ML fundamentals, and you get genuinely excited by what's possible with generative AI.
Multi-Country Track Record: Multi-country experience is non-negotiable. You've led marketing across at least 2–3 international markets and understand the nuance of cultural adaptation vs. global consistency.
Education: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field — or equivalent exceptional experience.
The Mindset
Culture Before Category: You are obsessively plugged into global cultural currents — K-pop, streetwear drops, gaming culture, regional memes, emerging aesthetics. You know what's trending before the trend reports come out — because you live there, not because you read about it in a McKinsey deck.
AI as Superpower, Not Buzzword: You see AI as the most powerful leverage a marketer has ever had. You're not afraid it will replace creativity — you use it to make your creativity faster, smarter, and more impactful. You have a strong point of view on where AI takes marketing in the next 3 years.
Aesthetic Rigour + Data Rigour: You notice the font, the colour palette, the spacing. You care about craft. But you back every creative decision with data — gut feel + data rigour is your operating system.
Builder, Not Maintainer: You thrive in ambiguity, you've built teams and systems from scratch, and you're energised by 0-to-1 problems as much as scaling what works. Entrepreneurial mindset is in your DNA.
10x Thinker: You don't optimise for 10% improvements — you think about how to do things 10 times better, 10 times faster, 10 times more efficiently. You'll be running a lean team that punches like a large one.
Founder-Friendly: You're comfortable working closely with a hands-on Founder-CEO, moving fast, and making decisions with imperfect information. Ego doesn't drive you; outcomes do.
Why This Is the Most Exciting CMO Role in the World Right Now
- Eyewear as fashion is a genuine white space globally — and Lenskart has the scale, the supply chain, the product, and the ambition to own it. You'd be building an iconic global brand in a category nobody has cracked yet.
- The $1B → $10B journey is underway. Lenskart has proven product-market fit and operational excellence. Now it needs the brand to match the business — and you'd be the architect of that leap.
- The Founder & CEO is deeply invested in marketing and brand-building. You won't be delegating downwards into a void — you'll be sparring with a founder who cares as much about this as you do.
- AI gives this role a leverage point no CMO had five years ago. You can build a marketing function at a scale and speed that was impossible before — and you'd be doing it first, in a category that's wide open.
