Dive Brief:
- Instacart, the grocery-shopping service based in San Francisco, received $44 million in a new round of funding from venture capital funds, led by the Andreessen Horowitz firm.
- The service, which allows consumers to fill an online cart that is then filled in actual stores by personal shoppers, plans to use the money to expand to 17 cities.
- Instacart declined to say where it will expand next, but did say that seven cities will be added in 2014, followed by 10 more in 2015.
Dive Insight
Instacart is rapidly becoming a darling of the tech-investment set.
Unlike rivals such as Amazon Fresh, FreshDirect, Peapod, et al, Instacart doesn't have warehouses, a massive workforce, truck fleets, etc. It has an app. And a bunch of self-employed contractors. That gives Instacart an extraordinary advantage in pricing and the ability to launch in new locations much, much faster than its competitors.