Instacart’s Pronounced Growth Likely to Subside as Home Delivery Competition Intensifies

With a network of nearly 8 million monthly active customers and over 600,000 drivers, Instacart’s grocery delivery platform boasts a strong presence across the United States. The firm benefited from a pandemic-induced surge in online grocery ordering in 2020, with its gross transaction value eclipsing $20 billion (versus $5 billion in 2019) as retailers hastily joined forces with Instacart to meet consumers’ evolving purchasing preferences that favored home delivery. In the years that followed, Instacart has managed to maintain a resounding position in the grocery delivery industry, as the platform’s more than $30 billion in gross transaction value gives it about 70% share of grocery sales placed on third-party intermediary platforms and about 30% of total grocery delivery sales (per eMarketer).