JetLenses is a new startup selling contact lenses to its customers for lower prices than leading competitors.
It can do this because of its business plan that reroutes the overhead costs associated with ordering contact lenses online; costs such as prescription verification, order tracking, and compliance and fulfillment.
The company is automating these overheads and as a result, can afford to reduce the costs of lenses for its customers.
It has been backed by start-up funder YCombinator and is set to take on major contact lenses e-commerce sites such as 1-800-Contacts, and Lens.com.
JetLenses
JetLenses was founded by the son of an eye doctor—Dhaivat Pandya, who also studied Statistics and Computer Science at Harvard. From his background, he began to identify a gap in the market where a solution could be found for the inefficiencies in the online lens-buying business.
Pandya reasons that most of the expense of contact lenses comes from overheads, and by changing the way that is done, it frees up cost in the market.
“A lot the reason why contact lenses are so expensive is just overhead,” he says.
What is the Issue?
Verifying customer prescriptions has been one area found to cause a delay in time and in exulting human labor, as often, obstacles arrive such as a doctor relocating their practice, or changing a phone number.
This means having to chase misdirected leads or changed numbers in order to verify a customers information before proceeding with verification. Time is wasted, as is money.
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Innovative Data-Science Technology
But JetLenses cuts out the complications with an innovative dataset it already maintains of existing practices. Its system works autonomously and combs through its data to match a doctor’s information to a practice in its listings. Then, the system automatically locates the new phone number and fax if necessary. It also automatically faxes the doctor’s office for verification along with an ability to process the doctor’s response.
The company uses data science for order-fulfillment too and can determine which fulfillment partner is the cheapest and fastest to use for each incoming order.
According to Pandya, JetLenses is the first company within the prescription lenses market to utilize these sorts of engineering tasks and the result is lower costing prescription lenses for its customers.
Featured Image: Deposit Photos/ Koldunov
