Instacart, the US-based grocery delivery service that counts corporates American Express, Amazon and Comcast among its investors, confirmed yesterday it has raised $200m in a series E round.
Investment manager Coatue Management led the round, which included growth equity firm Glade Brook Capital Partners and undisclosed existing investors. It valued Instacart at approximately $4.2bn, up from the $3.4bn valuation at which it last raised cash in March 2017.
Founded in 2012, Instacart runs an online-based service that enables users to order groceries from a range of local partners that is then delivered to their homes on the same day.
The company now has more than 200 partners across 190 cities in its home country, including what it described as seven of the top eight US supermarkets.
The round increased the company’s overall funding to approximately $910m, $44m of which came in a 2014 series B round backed by American Express Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of payment services firm American Express.
Venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, Canaan Partners, Khosla Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz also took part in the series B round along with angel investors Aaron Levie and Sam Altman. Instacart’s earlier backers included SV Angel and FundersClub.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) led a $220m series C round for the company in 2015 that featured mass media company Comcast’s corporate VC unit, Comcast Ventures, as well as Sequoia, Khosla, Andreessen Horowitz, Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital and Valiant Capital.
Grocery chain Whole Foods provided $36m the following year, before Instacart raised $400m from Sequoia, Khosla, KPCB, Thrive Capital, Valiant Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Wellcome Trust, Y Combinator Continuity, FundersClub and Initialized Capital in the 2017 round.
However, the Whole Foods investment may now be somewhat of a thorn in the company’s side. It was made as part of a strategic partnership whereby Instacart became Whole Foods’ exclusive delivery partner for three years in the US.
However, e-commerce firm Amazon acquired Whole Foods for $13.7bn in August 2017 and announced last week that it would deliver Whole Foods groceries to customers within the hour through its Prime Now service. It is unclear how the move will affect the Instacart deal.
Apoorva Mehta, Instacart’s founder and CEO, said in a blog post announcing the round: “In the next few years, we will be working hard to innovate for our customers by offering them more convenience and better selection at competitive prices.
“Recognising that our shoppers need better tools and processes to be able to offer great customer service, we will be investing in building robust shopper support teams and software. And, of course, we will continue to grow sales for our retailers and [consumer goods production] partners by strengthening our partnerships and innovating together.”