Instacart is a company that delivers groceries in Canada and the United States. Customers can order groceries using its mobile applications or website. The service lets users order groceries directly from participating retailers and have them delivered to their homes by a personal shopper.
Grocery delivery services are available to anyone with an email address and a credit card. This San-Francisco based company was founded by Max Mullen and Apoorva Mehta.
| Full Name | Instacart |
| Based on | Deliver Groceries in Canada & US |
| Founded | 2012 |
| CEO and Founder | Apoorva Mehta |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California |
| Official Website | https://www.instacart.com/ |
| Apoorva Mehta Net Worth | $1.2 billion (Last Updated 2022) |
| Instacart Net Worth | $39 billion (Last Updated 2022) |
Instacart Net Worth
According to the company, it raised $225 million in a new round of funding in 2020, boosting its market value to $13.7 billion from $7.6 billion. Currently, its net worth is around $39 billion.
According to Forbes, Apoorva Mehta owns 10% of the company, and has a net worth of $1.2 billion.
Instacart yearly valuation
| Year | Valuation |
|---|---|
| 2022 | $39 billion |
| 2021 | $39 billion |
| 2020 | $13.7 billion |
| 2018 | $7.6 billion |
| 2017 | $3.4 billion |
| 2016 | $2 billion |
Company Overview
Instacart, a popular delivery service, lets customers buy grocery items online. Then, the shoppers pack up the orders and deliver them to the customers’ homes.
The pandemic has led to a greater demand for this service, accessible to over 85 percent of Americans and 70 percent of Canadians. According to Instacart, order volumes have increased by 500% and average customer spending has increased by 35%.
Founder’s story
The 33-year-old creator of Instacart has become a billionaire. During the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak, Apoorva Mehta’s company’s services have been in high demand.
Originally from India, Mehta was raised in Canada.
Having no idea what he intended to do after graduation, he enrolled at the University of Waterloo to study engineering. In the years following college, he worked at several tech companies, like Qualcomm and BlackBerry, and then moved to Seattle to work as a distribution engineer for Amazon.
His job was to develop delivery systems that would get shipments to customers from Amazon warehouses. Those years at Amazon taught him that he likes building software and he wants challenges. The Amazon job didn’t challenge him, so he left.
Next, he founded startups for two years. Prior to Instacart, Mehta started more than 20 companies. None of them succeeded. The problem wasn’t that his products weren’t good, it was that he neglected them.
Mehta focused on the day-to-day challenges he faced. As a resident of San Francisco, he did not own a car. Cooking was his passion, but he could not find the groceries he needed in his neighborhood.
In 2012, people watched movies online, shopped online and met online, but not shopped for groceries online. It seemed like he had hit on a brilliant idea, and in no time at all, he had created an app where customers could order groceries and shoppers could shop for them.
In 2012, using his app, Mehta sent a 6-pack of beer to a fellow Y Combinator mentor, which led to a meeting and funding in his startup. The following year, Mehta was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 – in spite of orders often arriving without shoppers. He delivered himself by hailing an Uber. Instacart now operates in over 5,500 cities in North America, up from just San Francisco in 2012. It has contracts with more than 30,000 stores and it has added pickup in 2019. Additionally, it began delivering prescriptions in April 2020. As of now, almost 200 pharmacies are offering the service