Lenskart and Meesho Listed. OYO's Turn Is Next.

India Japan Kaizen — Investment Bridge Series, Part 4

Part 1 of this series mapped where Japanese capital was flowing into India. Part 2 went sector by sector — semiconductors, Global Capability Centres, deep tech. Part 3 delivered the headline that reframed the whole series — Japan overtaking the US as India's top source of FDI — and closed with a promise: a look at the exit side of this story, the wave of Japanese-backed Indian startups heading toward IPOs. That wave has now broken. Two of the three companies Part 3 named, Lenskart and Meesho, listed months ago and have a full trading history to show for it. The third, OYO, is on its third and most serious attempt yet. Three parts into this series, the story has been capital moving into India. Part 4 is about what happens when some of that capital tries to come back out.

Lenskart: A Rough Landing, a Strong Year

Lenskart Solutions — the eyewear retailer in which SoftBank is the largest external shareholder, with roughly a 15% stake — filed for a ₹7,278.76 crore (roughly $828 million) IPO priced at ₹382-402 a share, and listed on the NSE and BSE on 10 November 2025. The debut was weak: shares opened at ₹395 on the NSE, a discount of nearly 2% to the issue price, and fell further to an almost 3% discount on the BSE. SoftBank was also the largest seller in the Offer for Sale, offloading 2.55 crore shares alongside Temasek, Schroders Capital, Kedaara Capital, and Alpha Wave — and Japan's Nomura was one of the global names in the ₹3,268 crore anchor round that preceded listing. The market took longer than a day to agree with the IPO's pricing: by September 2026, the stock was trading around ₹668.90 on the NSE — up roughly 70% from its November listing price, and comfortably clear of the ₹402 issue price SoftBank and the other OFS sellers cashed out at.

Meesho: The Debut Lenskart Wasn't

Where Lenskart stumbled out of the gate, Meesho sprinted. The Bengaluru e-commerce platform's ₹5,421 crore ($604 million) IPO, priced at ₹105-111 a share and valuing the company at roughly $5.6 billion, listed on 10 December 2025 at ₹162.50 on the NSE — a 46% premium to the issue price, one of the strongest consumer-internet debuts India has seen in years. Unlike Lenskart, none of Meesho's largest backers — SoftBank, Prosus, and Fidelity among them — sold a share at listing. SoftBank's exit, when it came, was more deliberate and came later: in early September 2026, SoftBank affiliate SVF II Meerkat sold a 1.7% stake — 8 crore shares across two tranches, at an average ₹206.30 apiece — for roughly ₹1,650 crore (about $185 million), trimming its holding from 8.6% to 6.87%. The stock actually rose more than 3%, to ₹216.67, the day after the market digested the sale — a sign investors read it as routine portfolio management rather than a loss of conviction.

OYO's Third Attempt — This Time, Nobody's Cashing Out

OYO's path to the public markets has been the hardest of the three. After two earlier attempts were shelved in 2022 and 2024, and a 2025 listing timeline that SoftBank itself reportedly pushed back until the company's earnings improved, OYO's parent — renamed PRISM, formerly Oravel Stays — cleared SEBI's review on 2 June 2026 and filed an updated DRHP on 30 June for a ₹6,650 crore issue at a targeted $7-8 billion valuation. The structural difference from Lenskart and Meesho is the story here: PRISM's IPO is a 100% fresh issue, with no Offer for Sale at all. SoftBank, still OYO's largest shareholder at more than 30%, isn't selling a single share at listing — the entire raise is earmarked for the company itself, with roughly ₹4,987.5 crore of it going straight to repaying OYO's own borrowings. Founder Ritesh Agarwal has said he hopes to list "in the current financial year," which runs through March 2027; as of this writing, the price band and subscription dates still haven't been announced.

The Market Underneath These Listings

None of this happened in isolation. India's IPO market just posted its best quarter on record.

• Q3 2026 alone raised more than $9 billion (₹86,500 crore) in listing proceeds — the strongest July-September quarter on record — pushing 2026's total past $13 billion (₹1.24 lakh crore) so far this year.
• NSE itself, SBI Funds Management, and Manipal Health Enterprises led the quarter, together raising more than $4.3 billion — evidence the rally isn't confined to consumer-tech names like Lenskart and Meesho.
• 217 companies are sitting in SEBI's approval pipeline or awaiting clearance, which is what will decide whether 2026 matches the roughly $20 billion raised annually in each of the prior two years.

Lenskart and Meesho weren't the largest listings of the year by amount raised, but they carried the clearest Japanese fingerprints of any IPO this series has tracked — and a year of aftermarket performance (one stock up around 70%, the other still holding most of a 46% debut premium) is exactly the kind of signal that makes a SoftBank, or the MUFG and SMBC funds Part 3 described, more willing to write the next check rather than less.

What's Still Missing

Everything above describes capital committed years ago finally finding, or in OYO's case deliberately delaying, an exit. What this series still can't document is the next leg: whether the proceeds SoftBank is realizing from Meesho today, and will eventually realize from Lenskart and OYO, are being recycled into new India-bound vehicles the way Part 3's MUFG and SMBC funds are doing at a smaller scale — or simply returned to LPs in Tokyo with no onward India connection at all. There's also still no accessible route for a Japanese investor who isn't SoftBank, a sovereign fund, or a global asset manager to actually buy into any of these listed companies: no GIFT City-domiciled fund-of-funds tracking India's newly listed consumer-tech names, and no clear, publicly documented answer on custody, withholding tax, or FEMA mechanics for a Tokyo-based allocator who wants direct NSE exposure rather than a pre-IPO private placement.

If you work in cross-border fund structuring, custody, or are building a vehicle that would let Japanese capital access listed Indian equity rather than only private rounds — get in touch. That's the gap this series keeps running into, and exactly the kind of introduction India Japan Kaizen wants to help make.

This is Part 4 of India Japan Kaizen's Investment Bridge Series, publishing weekly. Part 5 will look at the access problem from the other side — the GIFT City fund-of-funds structures and custody routes that could let ordinary Japanese investors, not just SoftBank and the mega-banks, actually buy into India's listed growth story.