One-Hour Grocery Delivery Service Instacart Closes $220M Series C Round of Financing Led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 13, 2015) - Instacart (www.Instacart.com), the fast-growing grocery delivery service whose Personal Shoppers hand pick and deliver items from trusted local stores, today announced that it has closed a $220M round of Series C financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). Other participants in the round include Comcast Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital, Valiant Capital and previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Sequoia. This brings Instacart's total funding to date to approximately $275M.

"We look for visionary entrepreneurs who are re-imagining big business opportunities -- in Instacart, we found both," said Mary Meeker, general partner at KPCB, who will be a board observer for Instacart. "Many Americans spend hours per week grocery shopping. Combining its elegant app with on-demand delivery, Instacart allows consumers to save time -- and discover new products -- while shopping from their favorite local stores."

Instacart Founder and CEO Apoorva Mehta said that the company plans to apply the funds primarily toward category expansion, continued geographic growth and technology enhancements.

"Instacart's offering really resonates with customers," said Mehta, "We've got robust processes in place to support category and geographic expansion. Our vision is to help all types of local retailers get online and offer their customers one-hour delivery. This financing round will help us accelerate and scale those efforts."

Instacart has disrupted the traditional grocery delivery space with its crowdsourced labor force dubbed Personal Shoppers who shop for and deliver orders using their own transportation in as little as one hour. This eliminates the need for costly infrastructure such as inventory, warehouses, trucks and full-time drivers. Rather than trying to disintermediate local stores as some delivery services have done, Instacart's strategy is to partner with retailers to help them expand their geographic reach and overall revenue.

Over the past year, Instacart has achieved several significant milestones:

• The company's revenue grew by more than 10x in 2014, doubling in Q4 alone.
• Instacart signed partnership agreements with major retailers such as Whole Foods Market, Fairway Market and Fresh & Easy.
• The company signed business development agreements with HomeAway and Yummly.
• It more than doubled its full-time employee base, which now exceeds 100.
• The company now has more than 4,000 Personal Shoppers, independent contractors who shop for and deliver customer orders.

Michael Moritz, chairman of Sequoia and an Instacart board member, said, "Instacart has become the best friend of the U.S. supermarket industry -- making it possible for them to have much closer ties and provide a bevy of new services to their customers. Instacart is helping supermarkets across the country take full advantage of the full power of broadband internet connectivity."

"Instacart's smart use of technology has enabled it to soar in a category that's been plagued by infrastructure issues for many years -- they have a completely new way of enabling retail delivery," said Jeff Jordan, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and an Instacart board member. "We're looking forward to working side-by-side with Apoorva and Instacart's other investors to ensure that the company continues on its fast growth trajectory."

About Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) partners with the brightest entrepreneurs to turn disruptive ideas into world-changing businesses. The firm has helped build pioneering companies like Amazon, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Google, Nest, Netscape and Twitter. KPCB offers entrepreneurs years of operating experience, puts them at the center of a vast and influential network, and accelerates their success through expertise and support in recruiting, product design and delivery, business development, strategic partnerships and brand building. KPCB invests in all stages from seed and incubation to growth companies and operates from offices in Menlo Park, San Francisco, Shanghai and Beijing. For more information, visit https://www.kpcb.com and follow us @kpcb.

About Instacart
Instacart allows people to order groceries online by connecting them with a Personal Shopper who handpicks items at customers' local, favorite stores and delivers straight to their doors. Founded in San Francisco in 2012, Instacart has quickly scaled to 15 cities across the US and partnered with 50 grocery retailers, including popular national chains (Whole Foods Market, Costco) as well as local, artisan grocers (Fairway Market, Bi-Rite). By combining a personal touch with cutting-edge technology, Instacart offers customers a simple solution to save time and eat fresh food from the grocery brands they trust. Instacart is the only grocery service that can meet today's on-demand lifestyle by delivering in as little as one hour. First delivery is free at www.Instacart.com.