India’s eyewear giant Lenskart has experienced strong growth, expanding its stores and building its brand across the country. This week, however, the company faced backlash on social media due to a workplace grooming policy that many felt treated religious symbols unfairly.
Why Lenskart face backslash over just staff dress code
The issue started when writer Shefali Vaidya shared images on X (formerly Twitter), claiming they were from Lenskart’s internal employee style guide. “I have no way of confirming this, but I checked with two different AI platforms, and they believe these are genuine and from the Lenskart academic style guide,” she wrote.
Is wearing hijab with company logo is serious problem?
The document showed that while hijabs and turbans were allowed under certain conditions, items like “religious tikka/tilak and Bindi/Sticker” and kalawa threads were marked as “not allowed.” It also said that if hijabs were worn, they should be black and should not cover the company logo.
Vaidya later claimed she confirmed the document’s authenticity, said, “So I confirmed, this is genuine. This is what Peyush Bansal tells his employees, hijab is okay, but bindi/tilak/Kalawa is not.” She tagged the Lenskart company and its founder, Peyush Bansal, seeking clarification.
As the controversy grew, CEO Peyush Bansal, who is also a judge on Shark Tank India, responded publicly. He stated that the viral document does not reflect the company’s current policies. “I’ve seen an inaccurate policy document going viral about Lenskart. I want to clarify that this document does not reflect our present guidelines,” Bansal wrote in a post on X.
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