Apoorva Mehta is an India-American entrepreneur and founder of Instacart. It is a startup that operates a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the US and Canada. He was born in India.
INSTACART:- https://www.instacart.com/
EDUCATION
Apoorva earned his Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada.
AWARDS AND HONORS
- America's Richest Entrepreneurs Under 40' in 2016
- Forbes 30 Under 30 - All-Star Alumni list in 2017
- Apoorva's startup was named "The Most Promising Company in America" by Forbes in 2015
- In addition, Apoorva featured in Business Insider, Fortune, GQ India, Inc.com, and many platforms as an entrepreneur
ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY
After completing his studies, Apoorva worked as a design engineer with 'Blackberry' and then with 'Qualcomm.' He also worked at a steel factory for a brief period. After that, he moved to Seattle, where he joined 'Amazon' as a supply chain engineer.
While working at Amazon company, Apoorva realized that working in a corporate environment minimizes learning opportunities. however, working as a supply chain engineer made him realize his passion for software development and challenges. Nevertheless, he decided to quit 'Amazon' in 2010. Following this, he focused on developing ideas for a startup.
Apoorva then moved to San Francisco, where he spent the next two years applying his learnings. Before starting "Instacart," he tried to start 20 companies.
Apoorva once tried building an advertising network for social gaming companies. He had developed a social network called 'LegalReach' meant exclusively for lawyers. The research and development process for the network was done poorly, and Apoorva and his partner did not realize the uselessness of the site. Soon, they had to shut the portal down. Following this, he and his partner parted ways, Similarly, none of his other startups worked out.
More Article:-
Apoorva did not own a car in San Francisco. He loved to cook but had no good grocery shop near his house. The online grocery store options that were available had limited items to choose from. This situation proved a blessing in disguise as it encouraged Apoorva to explore opportunities in the online grocery business.
Apoorva began working on developing a delivery platform for on-demand groceries. In about less than a month, he developed an application through which people could order groceries online. He also developed a version of the application for in-store customers.
Apoorva became the first user of the application and conducted its first test run. Since he did not have any shoppers back then, he himself placed an order through the app, went to the store, and delivered the groceries to himself. Keeping the on-demand instant delivery concept in mind, Apoorva named the start-up 'Instacart.'
The expansion of 'Instacart' was not free of issues. Apoorva faced a class-action lawsuit in 2015. According to the lawsuit, the workers who shopped for and delivered the groceries were misclassified as independent contractors. As a result, Apoorva decided to make Instacart's shoppers its part-time employees. He also offered some benefits, such as health insurance, to them.
While researching for setting up an online grocery business, Apoorva learned a lot from the failure story of 'Webvan,' an online grocery start-up that had crashed miserably. After ‘Webvan's failure, investors were not interested in investing in such start-ups. Thankfully, the ‘Webvan’ disaster had taken place several years back. Thus, Apoorva did not have to struggle a lot to get technical developers and investors for 'Instacart.'
In March 2022 Instacart valued itself at $24 billion.
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