Neso Brands raises $100m, seeks to invest in eyewear brands

Singapore-based eyewear house Neso Brands announced raising $100 million that will be used to partner and invest in consumer eyewear brands around the world.

Neso is an initiative of omni-channel eyewear unicorn Lenskart, whose investors include KKR, Softbank, Alpha Wave Global and Temasek. Neso Brands said it will help eyewear brands grow by leveraging synergies across the Lenskart Group to accelerate international expansion.

Neso Brands also announces that Bjorn Bergstrom has joined the founding team as CEO. Bjorn Bergstrom has vast experience from consumer scale-ups, venture capital and management consulting.

Neso Brands is a Singapore-based global eyewear company founded in 2022 to enable the most promising direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands across the world to become brands of the future. Eyewear has to date been a very traditional industry with large incumbents, but is now ripe for a tech-enabled global transformation.

With general e-commerce adoption skyrocketing and technologies such as AR and AI becoming more mature, the time has come for nimble eyewear brands to capitalize on these trends and capture market share. Neso Brands will house these brands and enable a quicker global roll-out by giving the brands access to shared resources; particularly technology, supply chain, distribution, capital and best practices.

To lead this endeavor, Neso Brands has appointed Bjorn Bergstrom as founding CEO. Mr. Bergstrom is an experienced investor and DTC operator, having most recently served as Chief Growth Officer and interim Chief Product & Technology Officer for the global fashion brand NA-KD.

Based out of Sweden and launched in 2016, NA-KD expanded to more than 100 markets and reached net sales of over USD 200 million in just five years. Bergstrom’s experience prior to that includes working as a venture capital investor focusing on early stage growth startups, management consulting as well as operational roles at consumer startups.

“By investing in the most promising new brands in the industry and leveraging centralized resources across technology, manufacturing and distribution, Neso Brands will be uniquely positioned to scale the eyewear brands of the future. I am very much looking forward to leading the company on this journey and working closely together with our investors and partners,” said Neso Brands CEO Bjon Bergstrom.