New Delhi: Apoorva Mehta is the executive chairman and the founder of a San Francisco-based grocery delivery firm, Instacart. The delivery firm was recently valued at $13 billion.Apoorva Mehta has studied engineering and then worked at companies like Amazon, Blackberry, and Qualcomm. 

Apoorva decided to leave his job in 2010. He wanted to start his own business. He started around 20 ventures but nothing worked and tasted failure. Apoorva was tired of visiting grocery stores to buy essentials, as he had no car and the temperature in Canada was really cold. One fine day, when he was hungry and alone in his apartment, the big idea came and he decided to build a grocery delivery company. Earlier when he was short on manpower, he used to deliver groceries himself in a cab. (Also Read: UPSC Success Story: Meet Uma Harathi, the Resilient IITian Who Defied Failure Four Times to Secure AIR 3 in UPSC)

Born in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur, he left India for the African country of Libya with parents. He then moved to Canada which is one of the top places for immigrating Indians. After working in top companies like Amazon, Blackberry and Qualcomm, he decided to leave his job in 2010. (Also Read: This Woman Made Rs 650 Crore In A Single Month; She Is The Wife Of…)

Apoorva started Instacart in 2012, at the age 26. Instacart saw a blockbuster Initial public offering (IPO) of a whopping Rs 9,100 crore. The company expanded into the largest grocery-delivery player in the US in terms of revenue. Instacart has a network of over 80,000 retailers and over 7.7 million consumers. 

During the Covid Pandemic in 2021, Instacart’s valuation jumped to $39 billion. After 5 months, Apoorva resigned as CEO and his position on the company’s board as part of the IPO.

From being fed up with buying groceries offline, Apoorva is now a billionaire with a net worth of Rs 8,325 crore. His decision to address a personal need led to the creation of Instacart, a groundbreaking grocery delivery firm. Despite initial setbacks and personal deliveries in the early days, Apoorva’s vision and dedication led Instacart to extraordinary success. His story serves as a testament to the famous saying -necessity is the mother of invention.