Instant gratification is very much in vogue.
On Tuesday, grocery delivery service Instacart revealed in a regulatory filing that it has closed a $210 million round of funding, and according to tech news site Re/code, the investment will rise to $220 million. This puts the company's valuation at $2 billion, Re/code says.
It's a massive amount for what's essentially a home delivery service---something that has existed for years. But the internet has long promised to streamline home delivery in new ways, and Instacart is just one of many notable names working to, well, deliver on that promise. Amazon offers its own grocery delivery service, known as Amazon Fresh. It recently launched Amazon Prime Now, a service that delivers any of more than 25,000 "essentials" within an hour (if you're in certain parts of Manhattan). And Google is providing a similar breed of same-day shopping delivery.
That said, succeeding at instant delivery isn't easy. In late November, eBay pulled its app as it reassessed the high costs associated with running same-day delivery services. And it's not a small company.
Instacart is now in fifteen U.S. cities, having established a partnership with the Whole Foods grocery chain. But Amazon has the advantage of a well-entrenched delivery infrastructure. And Google is no small challenger either. Plus, there are the smaller rivals such as Postmates and Uber’s take on grocery delivery, UberEssentials.
Update 3:12 PM EST 12/30/2014: An earlier version of this story stated that Instacart's services are available in ten U.S. cities. It's actually available in fifteen, including Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and Washington, DC.
