- Instacart CFO and COO Ravi Gupta is going to join Sequoia Capital as a partner on the growth team starting in January
Ravi Gupta — the chief financial officer and chief operating officer at Instacart — is planning to depart from the company to join Sequoia Capital as a partner on the growth team starting in January. Gupta told TechCrunch that he wanted to “return to his investing roots.”
Prior to joining Instacart, Gupta was a director at KKR & Co. and a business analyst and McKinsey before that. While at Instacart, Gupta worked closely with Sequoia as the venture was an early investor in the company. Sequoia led Instacart’s $8.5 million Series A round. And Sequoia partner Michael Moritz is on Instacart’s board. Going forward, Gupta will continue advising Instacart.
Instacart’s VP of Finance & Strategy Sagar Sanghvi is going to be promoted to CFO. This will be a very busy role for Sanghvi as Instacart is reportedly gunning for an IPO next year. And Instacart is actively searching for a COO replacement.
Founded by CEO Apoorva Mehta, “Grocery Hacker” Brandon Leonardo, and Max Mullen, Instacart raised around $1.9 billion in funding since launching in 2012 and is valued at about $8 billion. Instacart now has 1,000 employees and there are 100,000 shoppers who fulfill online grocery orders for the company.
Instacart is available across 5,500 cities across the U.S. and Canada. And the company makes deliveries for around 20,000 stores.
“Ravi’s operational and investing experience, along with his strong work ethic and humility, will make him an invaluable partner to founders and our team,” wrote Sequoia partner Roelof Botha in a statement to TechCrunch.
Instacart also announced it recently made some key hires this month including Jakii Chu as chief marketing officer and Chris Rogers as VP of Retail. Rogers used to be a managing director of Apple Canada and Chu worked at Fanatics, Inc. for nearly five years.
Rogers is going to work out of Instacart’s Toronto office and report to chief business officer Nilam Ganenthiran.
