Instacart was all about grocery delivery, here's how it's different now

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Instacart in 2021, the grocery delivery startup's growth was cratering as its pandemic boom ebbed. The board of directors asked her to find new ways for the company to earn money.

Simo, a former executive at Meta with experience in advertising, played to her strengths. She aggressively expanded Instacart's advertising business, begun in 2019, which allows food brands to pay for better placement in the company's app. Brands had questioned whether the ads were helping, so Simo commissioned studies demonstrating their efficacy, two people familiar with the company said.

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She also hatched a plan to sell software tools and other products to grocery companies to help improve shopping experiences, they said. Then she embarked on a goodwill tour to visit the grocery companies and hosted their executives at her home in Carmel, California.

As Instacart prepares to go public next week, it is a markedly different company. Envisioned in 2012 as a service that matched people at home with contract workers who would shop for them and deliver groceries, it has increasingly focused on advertising and software products as its delivery business has slowed.

Last month, Instacart revealed in an offering prospectus that the ads and software sales had allowed it to do what skeptics considered impossible — turn a profit. Other so-called gig economy companies that use contract workers to