Apoorva Mehta

Executive Chairman and Founder of Instacart

Ontario

Apoorva Mehta is the executive chairman and founder of Instacart, a San Francisco-based grocery delivery firm valued at $39 billion. Mehta studied engineering at the University of Waterloo before launching Instacart in 2020, leading him to becoming a billionaire by the age of 33.

Early life

Mehta was born in 1986 in India before his family moved to Libya. When he was fourteen, his family moved again to Hamilton Ontario, allowing Mehta to attend the University of Waterloo where he earned an electrical engineering degree.

Career

Mehta spent his post-college years working as a design engineer at Blackberry and Qualcomm. His goal was to try “a little bit of everything” to find what he truly wanted to do. He began working for Amazon in 2008 as a supply chain engineer. There, he developed fulfilment systems to get packages from Amazon’s warehouse and into the hands of customers. He moved to San Francisco in 2010, and between then and 2012, Mehta launched 20 start-ups, none of whichthem took off. However, the tides would turn when Mehta launched Instacart in 2012 after securing funding. By 2020, Mehta became a billionaire at age 33 with a 10% stake in his company. By 2021, Instacart was valued at $39 billion