Instacart goes on the market and to the market, too

Alejandro Cuauhtemoc
2 min readJun 9, 2022

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Amid stock volatility, Instacart filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the stock market. In March, the company cut its valuation by 40% ($24 billion), citing market turbulence. Getting funding could be hard because two factors worry investors:

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  1. Slowed growth: During the pandemic, online grocery shopping skyrocketed, but now consumers are shifting back to their previous lifestyles. In-store selection and discounts are pulling shoppers back. Sales declined nearly 4% in April from last year.
  2. Competition intensifies: Shoppers have a lot of options. There are apps like Instacart or Uber’s Cornershop. Retailers are creating their own platforms such as Walmart+. Finally, tech giants like Amazon offer nonperishable goods for now… they have aggressive growth plans for Whole Foods and Amazon Go.
  3. Bad time for the stock market: In the last 6 months, the S&P 500 has fallen 17% and NASDAQ about 28%. In turbulent times investors do not want to make risky decisions and are interested in profitable, trustworthy companies.

Investors usually get excited by IPOs from hyper-growth, behavior-changing tech companies. But lately, there are negative cases, such as Uber, which has dropped 25% since January and is still falling. Still, the overall grocery delivery industry changes make Instacart an interesting company to watch.

#instacart #sales #commerce #ecommerce #socialresponsibility #business #grocery #technology #kitchen #investors #equity #market #shares #IPO #digital #services #bigtech #retailers #solutions #food #opportunities

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Alejandro Cuauhtemoc

Let’s talk about gossip in the business strategy & technology worlds. I am Strategy Lead at DiDi in the Bay Area xoxo