According to Reuters’ sources, grocery delivery company Instacart has raised $271 million in funding this month. This round of funding reportedly included Tiger Global Management and existing investors Coatue Management and Valiant Capital. Reuters’ source was not able to break down the stakes that are held by each investor.
And this additional funding brings Instacart’s latest funding round to $871 million. Last month, Instacart said that it raised $600 million in a round of funding led by D1 Capital. Since launching, Instacart raised a total of $1.87 billion and now the company is valued at $7.87 billion. Instacart generates revenue through delivery fees and coupon deals that it has in place with brands.
Instacart was founded by Apoorva Mehta in June 2012. Mehta grew up in Canada and studied electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo. After college, Mehta worked at various companies including Qualcomm and BlackBerry. Later he moved to Seattle to work as a supply chain engineer at Amazon.
At Amazon, he developed fulfillment systems for transporting packages from Amazon warehouses to customers. After working at Amazon for two years, he quit in pursuit of entrepreneurship. The LA Times reported that Mehta attempted to launch 20 companies including an ad network for social gaming companies and a social network for lawyers.
One of the reasons why Mehta believes the lawyer social network failed is because he did not care about the product enough. After going home from work, he did not think about lawyers or what they did day-to-day. One of the problems he found living in San Francisco is that he did not have a car, but he loved to cook and could not get the groceries he wanted in his neighborhood. That is when he came up with the idea for Instacart.
