Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta is leaving the company with a net worth of $1.1 billion following the grocery delivery app’s successful debut on the stock market.
Mehta, 37, relinquished his position as board chairman in Tuesday’s IPO, handing over the reins to CEO Fidji Simo, who joined Instacart in 2021 from Meta.
Instacart priced its IPO at $30 per share, for a valuation of $9.9 billion, and the stock rose 40% on its first day of trading, before closing the session at $33.70.
“What matters is how Instacart will operate over the next few years, rather than what it means on day one,” Mehta said. Bloomberg News. “We’re more focused on the long term and that’s what we’re excited about.”
Mehta’s fortune includes his 10% stake in Instacart, as well as his stake in Cloud Health Systems, his new startup that aims to fight chronic diseases, which was valued at $200 million in a funding round in 2022.
Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta leaves the company with a net worth of $1.1 billion following the company’s successful public debut.
At Instacart’s San Francisco headquarters on Tuesday, CEO Fidji Simo and other executives celebrated the IPO by ringing a bell shaped like the company’s carrot logo.
Born in India, Mehta spent most of his childhood in India before moving to suburban Toronto at the age of 14.
He earned a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo and later worked as an engineer at Blackberry, Qualcomm and later Amazon.
He founded Instacart in 2012 after securing a place in the prestigious Y Combinator startup accelerator program.
Although he applied for the program two months late, he got a job after using a prototype of his app to have a six-pack of beer delivered to one of the partners, he once said . TechCrunch.
The business grew quickly, then exploded during the pandemic, when grocery delivery gained popularity.
Instacart’s valuation soared to nearly $40 billion in 2021, giving Mehta a net worth of about $3.5 billion on paper, before rising interest rates and fears of a recession did bring many startups’ valuations back down to earth last year.
Mehta led the company as CEO for seven years, before stepping down and appointing Simo to replace him in 2021.
“A lot of people said I might have been kicked out of the company. The reality is, if I wanted to be the CEO of Instacart, I would be the CEO of Instacart,” Mehta said. Forbes this week.
Instacart’s core business became profitable in 2022, and that trend continued through the first six months of 2023, the company revealed in its regulatory filing last month.
Mehta gave up his board seat to Simo as part of the IPO process and sold about $21 million worth of his shares in the company, although he remains the largest individual shareholder from Instacart.
Instacart shares soared as much as 43% as they began trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol CART on Tuesday.
The San Francisco-based company’s IPO price was at the high end of its $28 to $30 price range and reached as high as $42.95 before ending the session at $33.70.
He is now focusing on his new startup, Cloud Health Systems. The company’s first product, Sunrise, is a weight loss telehealth service that offers prescription medications including Wegovy and Ozempic.
At Instacart’s San Francisco headquarters on Tuesday, Simo and other executives celebrated the IPO by ringing a bell shaped like the company’s carrot logo. About 1,000 employees participated, the company said.
The public stock offering is a highly anticipated milestone for Instacart and is also a sign that the long drought in the IPO market is coming to an end.
Instacart filed for an IPO privately in May 2022, but delayed those plans last fall when markets were in turmoil due to recession fears.
The company, officially known as MapleBear Inc, raised total proceeds of $660 million from the IPO, of which $237 million will be returned to investors who sold their shares in the offer.
The $30 IPO price gave Instacart an opening market value of about $10 billion, significantly lower than the $39 billion valuation it was given after a fundraising round in 2021.