Instacart co-founder Apoorva Mehta made a $1.3 billion fortune after the grocery delivery company’s initial public offering.
Meta, 37, resigned as CEO in August 2021, relinquishing the board position of executive chairman to current CEO and former Meta Platforms Inc. senior executive Fiji Simo as part of the IPO process. Fidji Simo). The transition marks the end of Mehta’s 11-year tenure at the company he co-founded in 2012.
Over the past decade, the startup has transformed from a Webvan clone into the largest grocery delivery company in the United States.Revenue grew 31% to about $1.5 billion in the six months ended June 30, in part because a pivot Shift to higher-margin advertising business.
After the outbreak, the company peaked in March 2021 and was valued at $39 billion by venture capitalists.Mehta holds 10% shares already done He is a billionaire, with a peak wealth of $3.5 billion. But as the virus abated and inflation accelerated, the San Francisco-based company struggled, cutting its internal valuation three times last October to about $13 billion.
Instacart, incorporated as Maplebear Inc., priced its IPO on Monday at $30 per share, valuing the company at $9.9 billion.The stock was up more than 40% when trading began in New York on Tuesday, hitting $40.02 at 1:19 p.m.
Mehta’s $1.3 billion fortune includes his 10% stake in Instacart and a stake in his new company, Cloud Health Systems, which aims to address chronic disease. The health technology startup, which is headed by Mehta, has raised $42 million from investors including Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst.it is worth US$200 million in a November 2022 funding round.
A spokesman for Mehta declined to comment on his net worth.
Mehta sells shares The offering is worth $21 million, according to Instacart, which will remain Instacart’s largest individual shareholder Modify registration and filing. Venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and D1 Capital Partners own larger stakes, 14% and 13% respectively, not including any additional shares they might buy in the IPO. Instacart’s other co-founders Brandon Leonardo and Maxwell Mullen each hold a 2% stake.
Internet Truck 2.0
Mehta, who founded Instacart more than a decade ago, entered the prestigious startup accelerator Y Combinator two months past the application deadline. delivered a partner Six beers to make up for it. Although he was born in India and grew up in Libya, He believes in his own time Living in a small town outside of Toronto was one of the reasons he wanted to start Instacart. He hates waiting at cold bus stops with bags of groceries and thinks the grocery shopping experience should be improved at that point.
After studying engineering at the University of Waterloo, Mehta worked in supply chain logistics at Amazon for two years before deciding to leave and start a company. He bounced around 20 ideas, ranging from enterprise software to advertising startups, before settling on the personal shopper idea. Webvan had previously experimented with online grocery delivery, but after burning through $800 million in venture capital and filing for bankruptcy, it quickly became synonymous with the excesses of the dot-com age.
Mehta also has a knack for raising money, raising more than $2.8 billion over the past decade from investors including Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, according to PitchBook data. Amazon’s 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods may have derailed the business, but it prompted retailers such as Costco Wholesale Corp. and Kroger Co. to align with Instacart in the delivery wars.
“This is really like a thermonuclear bomb targeting the entire grocery industry,” Mehta said. then. “When we look back, this was probably a turning point for Instacart.”
change of destiny
Another occurred in 2020 as the pandemic hit, with people stuck at home and looking for ways to deliver everything from groceries to medicine. Its order volume increased from 171.5 million units in 2020 to 262.6 million units in 2022.
Instacart peaked in the spring of 2021, when it raised new funding at a $39 billion valuation, double what it had been five months earlier. But around the same time, board members began to lose confidence in Mehta’s leadership, and Mehta began to question his long-term commitment to the company, according to people familiar with the matter. The company has also explored acquisitions of DoorDash Inc. and Uber Technologies Inc., people familiar with the matter said.
In July, the company announced that Simo, 37, would take over as CEO next month and Mehta would become executive chairman. A year later, Mehta decided to step down after Instacart debuted as a public company.
After 10 years in grocery delivery, Mehta’s new company is turning to the other side of the coin: weight loss. Cloud Health Systems’ first brand, Sunrise, is selling online weight loss programs, including drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic.
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