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Grocery delivery enterprise Instacart is likely to be heading for a public listing soon, taking advantage of the rising demand of digital delivery amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The California-based company operates in the US and Canada, reaching about 85 per cent and 70 per cent households in each country, respectively. One of the largest startups in the US, Instacart is said to have partnerships with about 45,000 stores in these geographies.
Instacart’s Valuation
As an online platform, Instacart benefitted greatly from the paradigm shift in grocery shopping that followed the COVID-19 crisis. It also helped the company receive a positive investor response in its funding round held in March, where it raised about US$ 265 million.
This funding round, headed by existing investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, T Rowe Price, etc, saw Instacart’s valuation jump to about US$ 39 billion.
Instacart IPO Details
In November 2020, reports surfaced claiming Instacart has picked financial services provider Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) to head its initial public offering (IPO), and that the IPO could come as early as 2021 and value the company at about US$ 30 billion.
However, in March this year, reports quoting sources said that the grocery delivery giant is considering a direct listing, aka direct public offering (DPO), instead of a traditional IPO.
Industry experts estimate that Instacart could be valued at over US$ 50 billion by the stock market, which would be significantly higher than its March valuation of US$ 39 billion.
This would also make Instacart one of the largest and most anticipated public listings for this year.
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Instacart IPO Date
As for the timeline of its public listing, Instacart Chief Executive Officer Apoorva Mehta had, in 2019, signaled towards an eventual IPO.
Instacart was initially expected to go public early this year. However, the company has reportedly pushed the plan to late 2021.
While the company itself has not commented on this matter, reports claim that the ambiguity regarding its public listing date came amid the COVID-related impact on Instacart’s operations.
The Californian company laid off about 1,900 employees in January this year in efforts to boost the ranks of its contractual workers. Meanwhile, it plans to raise its corporate headcount by about 50 per cent by the end of this year, along with expanding projects.
