Tech investors appear to have found their one true love in Instacart. The startup has been raising tons of money over the past year. Continuing in the same vein, it has orchestrated its largest round of funding till date and has raised $600 million at a massive $7.6 billion valuation. The latest round was led by Daniel Sundheim’s D1 Capital Partners.
This round follows Instacart’s second fund raise which saw it snag $150 million, and an earlier round that saw it net $200 million at a $4 billion+ valuation. These rounds took place 6 and 8 months ago respectively, and collectively, have netted the startup over $1 billion.
The Apoorva Mehta led company facilitates grocery delivery for hundreds of thousands of households across the US, allowing them to place order and get delivery for groceries and other produce from over 300 prominent retailers, including Kroger, Costco, Walmart and Sam’s Club. The company primarily receives and fulfills orders through its mobile application.
The company did not particularly need the money at the moment. Being a thrifty spender, it has almost all of its series D and E funds intact. However, CEO Mehta termed this round as “opportunistic”, stating that since the money was there, well, why not? The company plans to use the newly acquired funds for expansion, more specifically powering its plans to double its engineering team by 2019, most of which are for its its recently announced Toronto office.
Interestingly, Instacart could also go ahead with an in the next couple of years IPO to raise further money. While it may seem like something of an odd decision considering its already overflowing war chest, expansion has the potential to bring it into contention with companies like Amazon, and then all this money is going to come in handy.
Speaking with TechCrunch regarding the latest fund raise, Mehta said:
2018 has been a really big year for us. The reason why we are so excited is because the opportunity ahead of us is enormous. The U.S. is a $1 trillion grocery market and less than 5 percent of that is bought online. It’s an enormous category that’s highly under-penetrated.
