Instacart Founder Apoorva Mehta Sued for Alleged Copyright Infringement, Misappropriation of Trade Secrets
- Also named in the lawsuit by NextMed is Tejasvi Singh, who currently runs Cloud Health Systems.
A lawsuit has as been filed against Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta “over allegations of misappropriation of trade secrets, copyright infringement and other claims,” Bloomberg has reported. Hello Logistics Inc., which operates under the name NextMed, sued Mehta and his business partner Tejasvi Singh, accusing them of using stolen trade secrets to create a healthcare startup that was their copy,” the report said. Both companies run websites promoting weight loss.
The complaint, filed on Dec. 20 in a federal court in Manhattan, New York, said that Mehta teamed up with Singh, a co-founder of NextMed, “to create a copycat company, dubbed Sunrise,” according to Bloomberg. Singh, who currently runs Cloud Health Systems, collected some of the company’s closest held trade secrets under the guise of gathering the information as part of due diligence for investors, said the report.
NextMed said in the lawsuit that Mehta’s new company, launched a few weeks ago, has already raised $30 million from two venture capital firms. It is seeking an order to shut down the Sunrise website and unspecified monetary damages.
Mehta founded Instacart in 2012. The demand for the company’s delivery model skyrocketed due to the coronavirus pandemic. This August, Mehta stepped down as executive chairman, as the San Francisco-based online delivery giant was set to go public. However, Forbes reported that although the company has not formally withdrawn its SEC filing, it has canceled plans to go public this year. The company is reportedly waiting for more favorable market conditions for an IPO.
In 2020, Mehta, 36, entered the coveted list of billionaires. Forbes reported then that Mehta’s addition to the list comes after the San Francisco-based unicorn’s value rose from $7.9 billion to $13.7 billion. A unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion. Forbes estimates that “Mehta owns a 10 percent stake, making him the newest member of the three comma club with a net worth of $1.2 billion.”