San Francisco-based Instacart has submitted draft plans to list its shares on Wall Street. While the company has not given an explicit timeline, some analysts believe it could happen before the end of 2022.

Instacart, which runs a grocery delivery platform, saw growth explode during the pandemic and optimists see the business becoming the Amazon (AMZN:NASDAQ) of the grocery deliveries market. Revenues have jumped from $735 million in 2019 to $1.88 billion in 2021, according to estimates.

The confidential filing with the US watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission comes about six weeks after Instacart proactively slashed its own valuation by almost 40%, from around $39 billion to $24 billion in response to challenging market conditions.

Grocery delivery has gone the same way as carting takeaways to homes, with a deluge of new entrants emerging but very few able to turn a profit. In the UK, Deliveroo (ROO) and Just Eat Takeaway (JET) are turning their attention to groceries, as are start-ups like Getir, Gorillas, Stuart and many others.

Instacart hopes to differentiate itself through the use of technology. It uses gig workers to fetch products from third-party supermarkets and deliver them to the customer’s door, while gathering data on shopping habits.

In 2021 Instacart acquired artificial intelligence start-up Caper AI to strengthen its ambitions to provide shopping technology to retailers.

‹ Previous2022-05-19Next ›