Brands – KNOWALLEDGE

Instacart co-founder Apoorva Mehta exits with $1.1 billion after IPO

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.

KnowALLedge Plus:

>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.

Air India unveils new brand identity, symbolising ‘Window of Possibilities’

Air India undergoes a makeover. The new aircraft livery and design features a palette of deep red, aubergine, and gold highlights as well as a chakra-inspired pattern.

In its release, India’s oldest airline said that its new symbol, ‘The Vista’ takes its inspiration from the peak of the gold window frame and stands for limitless possibilities, progress, and the airline’s bold, confident outlook for the future.

Air India was fully acquired by Tata Sons in January 2022. The task of its rebranding went to McCann Workgroup India and the brand design was carried out by Futurebrands.

KnowALLedge Plus:

>Even after the rebranding, Air India will continue using its iconic ‘Maharaja’.

>The much-celebrated mascot originated in 1946, when Bobby Kooka, Air India’s Commercial Director, and Umesh Rao, an artist with advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, together created the moustachioed icon.

>Kooka famously said, “We call him a Maharajah for want of a better description. But his blood isn’t blue. He might look like royalty, but he isn’t royal.”

Ikea copycat opens first store in Moscow

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, several Western firms halted their operations in Russia and eventually exited the country. Sensing a business opportunity, Swed House, a Belarusian furniture firm that is a copycat of Ikea, has opened its first store in Moscow.

Japanese giant Sega makes an offer to buy Angry Birds

Sega, the company behind Sonic the Hedgehog, recently announced it has made a €706 million ($776 million) offer to buy Finland’s Rovio Entertainment, the maker of the popular gaming franchise Angry Birds.

Tim Cook inaugurates Apple’s first retail store in India.

Apple’s first retail store in India opened in the heart of Mumbai’s bustling Bandra Kurla Complex. Tim Cook also greeted customers who visited the store and posed for selfies with some of them. The design of the store has been inspired by the black-and-yellow taxis, locally known as kaali-peelis that are ubiquitous in India’s financial capital. The Apple CEO was visibly stunned when a man named Sajid Moinuddin brought with him a 33-year-old Macintosh classic computer with himself.

Start-up to produce oxygen from moon’s surface

An Israeli start-up, Helios, says it has developed technology that can produce oxygen needed for fuel from the lunar soil. This will make multiple and long-term missions to the moon economically viable, as it will allow moon colonies to “live off the land” instead of having to carry all of their fuel and other resources from Earth.

KnowALLedge Plus

In 1970 Gerard K. O’Neill, a Princeton University physicist and space activist talked about space colonies and presented detailed concepts for human settlements in space. He designed a kilometre-long sealed cylinder, to be built primarily of processed lunar materials and powered by solar energy, capable of sustaining a human colony indefinitely at a point in space between the Earth and the Moon.

In his book The High Frontier (1978) he suggested that space colonies might be the ultimate solution to such terrestrial problems as pollution, overpopulation, and the energy shortage.