The company, the idea for which was seeded by an empty refrigerator in the founder's apartment, went public recently and was valued at over $12 billion
(File) Instacart founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta, stands in the Bi-Rite Market on Divisadero Street on Thursday, July 24, 2014 in San Francisco, Calif.
Image: Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
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An empty refrigerator. That’s what it took to change Apoorva Mehta’s life.
The son of immigrant parents, who went from India to Libya and Canada, Mehta is a newly-minted billionaire worth a staggering $1.3 billion, while a company that he founded—thanks to the inspiration he found from an empty refrigerator—is worth $12 billion.
The 37-year-old Mehta is the founder of Instacart, a grocery delivery platform with over 7.7 million users and a network of over 80,000 stores in the US, and, until yesterday, served as the company’s chairman. Instacart went public on September 18 after a $9.9 billion IPO in the US and since then has rallied to be valued at over $12 billion.
“More than a decade ago, I was sitting in my apartment in San Francisco bemoaning the fact that the only thing I had in my refrigerator was hot sauce,†Mehta wrote on LinkedIn soon after his company went public. “Don’t get me wrong, I love hot sauce, but you can’t exactly make it a meal.â€