Once a supply-chain engineer at Amazon in Seattle, Apoorva Mehta left his job and relocated to San Francisco with an ambition to start his own business. He toyed with the idea of a social network for lawyers to an advertising startup for gaming industries, until he finally stumbled upon the idea of a grocery-delivery company that has since grown to be the largest of its kind in the US. On September 19, 2023, Instacart (incorporated as Maplebear Inc.) started offering its shares on NASDAQ to the public, generating a whopping $1.1 billion (over Rs. 9100 crore) of fortune for its co-founder.
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>Apoorva Mehta was born in India, grew up in Libya and moved to a small town outside Toronto, Canada. Before his stint at Amazon, he worked at Blackberry and Qualcomm.
>An empty refrigerator was the lightbulb moment for Mehta’s new venture. Once it so happened that he was left with hot sauce in his refrigerator. Back in 2012, one could shop for everything except online groceries.
>Today, Instacart delivers groceries to more than 14000 cities across the United States and millions of households across North America depend on Instacart for their weekly shopping.
>Although he stepped down as CEO in 2021, Mehta remains the single largest shareholder of Instacart. As of September 2023, he is the CEO of Cloud Health Systems, a health-tech startup that aims to address chronic illness.