Instacart is a grocery delivery startup that delivers in as short as an hour. It focuses on delivering groceries and home essentials, Instacart already has over 500,000 items from local stores in its catalog. Customers can choose from a variety of local stores including Safeway, Whole Foods, Super Fresh, Harris Teeter, Shaw's, Mariano's,Jewel-Osco, Stanley's, and Costco. Customers can mix items from multiple stores into one order. Instacart has raised funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and Canaan Partners besides other participants.
E-commerce has disrupted a number of large categories by 2012, while online penetration of groceries is extremely low. Instacart seized the huge opportunities by providing same-day delivery from your favourite grocery store via an army of local contractors, often within the hour. Utilizing the on-demand service model, Instacart is extremely capital efficient and much easier to scale up than other players.