Back in June, the company’s valuation was $400 million and it raised $44 million. So that’s a pretty big valuation leap. Founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta said the company planned to use the new funding for continued geographic growth, technology enhancements, and category expansion.
Instacart, launched about 3 years ago, operates in 15 cities and service 4,000 shoppers with groceries delivery.
Instacart is just one of several startups trying to tackle the speedy-delivery space, including New York-based WunWun, which delivers small orders of groceries and other goods without a delivery fee in under an hour, and Postmates, which does the same, but with a $5 delivery fee. It also competes with FreshDirect, which delivers groceries to the Northeast with a delivery fee of up to $7.99 for next-day service.
Big players like Google, with Shopping Express, and Amazon, with AmazonFresh, are also experimenting with same-day grocery delivery. Both can bring customers their goods same-day, but with longer delivery windows than those of Instacart, Postmates, or WunWun.
This fund-raise was reported by TechCrunch at the beginning of December 2014.