How Instacart Founder Apoorva Mehta Became a Billionaire

Apoorva Mehta, a 33 year old entrepreneur, Instacart’s founder and CEO is now a billionaire.

He started grocery delivery company, Apoorva Mehta has seen demand for his grocery delivery firm’s services skyrocket in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Who is Apoorva Mehta:

Apoorva Mehta is the Indian Canadian entrepreneur and founder of Instacart. Instacart is one of the largest internet based grocery delivery service provider.

In 2012, he co-founded it along with Max Mullen and Brandon Leonardo. In 2020, he became a billionaire at the age of 33.

He is the CEO of the San Francisco-based online grocery shop ‘Instacart.’ His company was valued at $30 billion as of 2021.

Early life and education:

In 1986, he was born in India. His family shifted to Libya after his birth. At his age of 14, they shifted to Canada.

There he eventually studied electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo and worked as a design engineer at Blackberry and Qualcomm. He born in India and raised in Canada.

Entrepreneurial Journey:

Before joining Amazon in 2008, he worked as design engineer at Blackberry & Qualcomm. He worked as a supply chain engineer at Amazon.

In 2010, he left Amazon and moved from Seattle to San Francisco. Apoorva Mehta was looking for a new challenge.

During 2010 to 2012, he started trying his hand at entrepreneurship. Apoorva Mehta came up with ideas included groupon for food and launched 20 start-ups, but none clicked and all failed.

He started coding an app. In 2012, he launched Instacart. He became the first customer and shopper of his Instacart, ordering groceries on his own grocery delivery app, then picking up, and delivering it to himself.

Same year he planned to apply for funding through Y Combinator but missed the deadline. Instacart has since expanded from San Francisco to more than 30,000 stores and 5,500 cities in North America.

Instacart has partners like Kroger, Albertsons, Publix, and Sam’s Club. Instacart allows customers to select and order groceries online. Suppliers and Shoppers pack and deliver the grocery orders to a customer’s home.

A booming on-demand delivery business, which is available to more than 70% of Canadian households and 85% of U.S. households.

According to Instacart, the average customer spent up to 35% more per grocery order and order volume has gone up by as much as 500% in the past 1 year.

Apoorva became a billionaire at the age of 33 with a 10% stake in his company by 2020. In 2021, the value of Instacart was $39 billion.

In July 2021, Mehta resigned as CEO and is now serving as the executive chairperson. Fidji Simo is the new CEO of the Instacart. He was the former head of the Facebook app.

In 2013, he was included on Forbes 30 under 30. He was included in Time100 Next in 2021.

The grocery delivery company has hired more than 300,000 new shoppers. The company announced plans to hire 250,000 more to get back to offering same-day deliveries and one-hour deliveries.