GKB Hi-Tech Lenses, a brand synonymous with ophthalmic lenses outlines their history and vision for the future
GKB Hi-Tech Lenses is a leading Indian manufacturer and exporter of Ophthalmic Lenses based out of Tivim Industrial Estate, Goa. The company has grown to become one of the largest and most successful ophthalmic lens manufacturers in India, with a current market share of 35-38% under the leadership of Mahendra Kumar Gupta and his technocrat sons, Shobit Gupta and Neeraj Gupta.
Almost about 15000 lenses are exported daily to over 50 countries worldwide, including Europe, Middle East, and sub-Saharan countries. The company has large manufacturing centres in India (Goa, Delhi, Coimbatore, Cochin). It manufactures over 30000 lenses/spectacles per day with 50% of it made in its overseas plants. Currently they cater to 10,000 opticians in India and 15,000 opticians globally, where 1,000 people are employed in Goa itself. GKB Hi-Tech is the first Indian manufacturer to win the prestigious CAPEXIL Export award for ophthalmic lenses, and has been receiving the award every year since its inception.
The company can be credited with many firsts in the optical industry in India; the first company to manufacture progressive lenses, Hi-Index lenses and multi-coated lenses amongst the other achievement.
The manufacturing of GKB Hi-Tech is different from any other manufacturers. Its orders gets generated when a consumer goes to the optician with a prescription to buy a spectacle. Therefore every lens produced in GKB Hi- Tech is a unique prescription and is for an individual person. This calls for a logistic system which caters to 15,000 opticians globally and makes their orders reach in time within a week to be fitted in the spectacle frame of the consumer. This requires a very robust IT system which creates the ordered parcels for individual optician and despatches across India and abroad.
The system in GKB Hi-Tech is that the orders are received on a central server direct from the optician across India and abroad, gets manufactured in the company and despatched to respective opticians.
GKB Hi-Tech enjoys this robust system and that is why it is producing such large quantity of lenses at 5-6 of its facilities catering to the opticians.
Thanks to this manufacturing and distribution system, it is the most wanted brand and largest company in the country in the optical field.
Today, the company is converting itself to a onestop- solution to manufacture complete spectacles instead of just manufacturing lenses. They have come up with a unique App, in its sister company, Spexmojo.com. It is a discovery platform to discover and choose the spectacle frames of your neighbouring opticians and complete the purchase of spectacle at their convenience at the partner optician. This unique concept is the first in the world, which is introduced by GKB Hi-Tech Lenses. More than 1000 opticians have become partners with the company to sell their products.
The stakeholders of GKB Hi-Tech, Directors, and Managers have never worked in their tenure with GKB Hi-Tech
for more than 2-3 years on the same assignment. They always want and are eager to adapt to new ventures, innovations, and challenges. This is the reason the company has a large number of management people who have
stayed with the company for more than two decades.
Conceiving the idea and delegating it for execution is the main theme of GKB Hi-Tech. The future and growth of the company is extremely bright.
