Lenskart led WCRC’s India Trusted D2C Brands edition with 85.84, ahead of Nykaa at 85.65 and CaratLane at 84.32. Just 0.19 points separated the first two in the published ranking. Read the three scorecards together and a different brand leads depending on which part of the customer relationship you examine. India’s Most Trusted D2C Brands 2026
The pillar leaders change
Nykaa had the highest Brand Recall score of the three at 93, one point ahead of Lenskart and nine ahead of CaratLane. CaratLane led the trio on Consumer Trust & Sentiment at 88, compared with 86 for Lenskart and 85 for Nykaa. Lenskart led on Brand Positioning at 88, compared with 87 for Nykaa and 84 for CaratLane. These are three different results from the same cohort. Lenskart scorecard · Nykaa scorecard · CaratLane scorecard
The D2C methodology gives Consumer Trust & Sentiment a 32% weight, with Brand Recall at 18%, Brand Positioning at 15% and Brand Love at 15%. Three other pillars account for the remaining 20%. CaratLane’s lead on sentiment and Nykaa’s lead on recall illustrate why a manager should ask which metric a decision is meant to improve before using the overall rank as a benchmark. India D2C methodology
The scorecards can point to different questions for each business. An eyewear team might ask where customers lose confidence between choosing a frame and collecting it. A beauty retailer might test whether familiar branding carries through to confidence about product selection. A jewellery business might ask whether trust at the point of purchase helps bring buyers back. These are questions to test with customer data. The published scores neither establish why customers gave their trust nor tell us whether the 0.19-point gap is statistically meaningful.