Instacart cofounder Apoorva Mehta stole trade secrets, alleges lawsuit

New Delhi, Dec 23

Apoorva Mehta, the Indian-origin Co-founder of grocery delivery company Instacart, has been accused of using stolen trade secrets to build a healthcare startup promoting weight loss.

Hello Logistics, which operates under the name NextMed, has sued Mehta, his business partner Tejasvi Singh, and their company Cloud Health Systems, reports The American Bazaar.

Indian-Canadian businessman Mehta, who announced to step down as executive chairman of Instacart in July this year, has been sued over allegations of misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement and other claims.

According to the lawsuit, Singh collected some of NextMed's trade secrets under the guise of gathering the information as part of "due diligence for investors".

Mehta and Singh then used the information to create a company that "does business as Sunrise, with a copycat website", according to the complaint.

They also allegedly implemented NextMed's highly confidential customer acquisition and other strategies, "in mere weeks".

Mehta's new healthcare company has raised $30 million from two venture capital firms.

In July, the US-based Instacart's Founder and Executive Chairman Mehta announced to step down from the online grocery delivery service he founded nearly a decade ago.

Instacart announced that CEO Fidji Simo has been appointed as Chair of the Board of Directors, effective as Mehta moves out from the board once Instacart becomes a public company.

"Since I transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairman a year ago, I realised that I want to pursue a new mission and I want to do it with the same singular focus that I had while building Instacart. Stepping off the board will allow me to do just that," Mehta had said in a tweet.

Instacart partners with more than 800 national, regional, and local retail brands to facilitate online shopping, delivery and pickup services from more than 70,000 stores across more than 5,500 cities in North America on its Marketplace.