Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta leaves the company with $1.1B fortune after it filed for IPO and stock jumped 40% in the first day of trading
- Apoorva Mehta, 37, relinquished his Instacart board position as part of the IPO
- His net worth is $1.1 billion after co-founding the grocery delivery app in 2012
- Mehta's next venture is a startup focused on chronic illness and weight loss
Instacart's founder Apoorva Mehta is leaving the company with a net worth of $1.1 billion following the grocery delivery app's successful stock market debut.
Mehta, 37, relinquished his position as board chair as part of Tuesday's IPO, handing 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 as much as 40 percent on the first day of trading, before closing the session at $33.70.
'What matters is how Instacart performs over the next few years, rather than what it means on day one,' Mehta told Bloomberg News. 'We focus more on the long-term and that's what we're excited about.'
Mehta's fortune includes his 10 percent stake in Instacart, as well as his share in Cloud Health Systems, his new startup that aims to tackle chronic illness, which was valued at $200 million in a 2022 financing round.
![Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta is leaving the company with a net worth of $1.1 billion following the company's successful stock market debut](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/09/20/15/75638789-12540197-image-a-8_1695219185125.jpg)
Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta is leaving the company with a net worth of $1.1 billion following the company's successful stock market 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](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/09/20/15/75638793-12540197-image-a-9_1695219342467.jpg)
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 the suburbs of Toronto at age 14.
He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo and went on to work as an engineer at Blackberry, Qualcomm and later Amazon.
He founded Instacart in 2012 after gaining a spot in the prestigious Y Combinator startup accelerator program.
Though he was two months late applying for the program, he secured a position after using a prototype of his app to have a six-pack of beer delivered to one of the partners, he once told TechCrunch.
The company grew rapidly, and then surged during the pandemic, when grocery delivery soared in popularity.
Instacart's valuation soared to nearly $40 billion in 2021, giving Mehta a net worth of some $3.5 billion on paper, before rising interest rates and fears of a recession brought many startup valuations back down to earth last year.
Mehta led the company as CEO for seven years, before he stepped down and named Simo as his replacement in 2021.
'A lot of people have said that perhaps I was pushed out of the company. The reality is, if I wanted to be the CEO of Instacart, I would be the CEO of Instacart,' Mehta told Forbes this week.
Instacart's core business turned profitable in 2022, and that trend has continued in the first six months of 2023, the company disclosed in its regulatory filing last month.
Mehta relinquished his board seat to Simo as part of the IPO process, and sold about $21 million worth of his stock in the company, though he remains Instacart's largest individual shareholder.
![Shares of Instacart soared as much as 43 percent as they began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker CART on Tuesday](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/09/20/15/75614149-12540197-Shares_of_Instacart_soared_as_much_as_43_percent_as_they_began_t-a-10_1695219378310.jpg)
Shares of Instacart soared as much as 43 percent as they began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker CART on Tuesday
![The IPO of the San Francisco-based company was priced at the top end of its $28 to $30 price range, and popped as high as $42.95 before ending the session at $33.70](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/09/20/15/75614561-12540197-The_IPO_of_the_San_Francisco_based_company_was_priced_at_the_top-a-11_1695219384134.jpg)
The IPO of the San Francisco-based company was priced at the top end of its $28 to $30 price range, and popped as high as $42.95 before ending the session at $33.70
He now turns his focus to 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. Around 1,000 employees attended, the company said.
The public stock offering is a long-awaited step for Instacart and also came as a sign that the IPO market's long drought is coming to an end.
Instacart filed privately for an IPO in May 2022 but delayed those plans last fall when the markets were roiling due to recession fears.
The company, officially known as MapleBear Inc, raised a total of $660 million in proceeds from the IPO, of which $237 million will go to investors who sold their shares in the offering.
The $30 pricing of the IPO gave Instacart a market value of around $10 billion at the open, significantly lower than the $39 billion value placed on it after a fund-raising round in 2021.