Grocery delivery company Instacart announced today that it is appointing Fidji Simo as its new CEO effective August 2. Simo has been on Instacart’s board since January of this year. She has spent the past decade at Facebook where she was most recently Vice President and Head of the Facebook app. Instacart Founder and soon-to-be-former CEO Apoorva Mehta will move into a new role as Executive Chairman of the Board and will also report to Instacart’s Board of Directors.
According to the press announcement, Simo oversaw development at strategy for the Facebook app, and helped drive Facebook’s mobile monetization strategy. She was also responsible for “rolling out videos that autoplay in News Feed,” which may or may not be a plus, depending on your point of view.
However, Simo was also at Facebook as it moved from a private company to a public one and will most likely be leading Instacart as it does the same. Founded in 2012, Instacart has since raised $2.7 billion in funding and is preparing for an IPO. The company was thrust into the national spotlight last year as the pandemic pushed record numbers of people into online grocery shopping.
Simo is also joining Instacart at a time when it is facing competition on many fronts. Big players like Amazon and Walmart are ramping up their own grocery delivery efforts, a new wave of smaller grocery stores offer grocery delivery in as few as 10 minutes, and other third-party delivery services such as DoorDash and Uber are moving further into grocery. In response, Instacart has been forced to add half-hour express delivery in select cities. The service is also reportedly looking to create automated fulfillment centers.
Then there is the question looming around Instacart’s grocery delivery business in general. During the pandemic, it was an easy way for retailers to quickly add delivery infrastrcuture to their business. But given Instacart’s fees and concerns about who owns the customer relationship, not all retailers are finding the same value with the service.
Given all that, Simo is taking over Instacart at a critical point in the company’s existence and will certainly have her hands full the moment she starts.
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