Several founders of online food delivery services who became billionaires have fallen from that rarified status as demand for the pandemic-darling companies softens, according to a report.
The executives behind DoorDash, Getir, Instacart and Just Eat Takeaway have seen their fortunes plummet by a combined $15 billion, Bloomberg reported.
The spigot of cash from investors that helped those companies explode has dried up, sinking their valuations, as the businesses burn money to maintain market share, experts said.
“The fact that high annual exceptional growth rates have been an exceptional phenomenon and cannot be maintained at the same level over years should have been clear from common sense alone,” Matthias Schu, a lecturer at the Lucerne School of Business, told Bloomberg.
The biggest losers include Nazim Salur, the chief of Istanbul-based Getir, whose net worth has fallen a staggering $4.29 billion between a March 2022 peak of $5 billion and his current $775 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The app-based service — which is available in New York, Chicago and Boston — had to abandon plans to expand in several European countries and laid off more than 14% of Getir’s global workforce last year, as The Post reported.
The Post has sought comment from Getir.
November 2021 was also a better time for the trio of Stanford University friends-turned-DoorDash co-founders — Tony Xu, Stanley Tang and Andy Fang — who each boasted a net worth of around $3.2 billion, Bloomberg’s index showed.
However, Xu, DoorDash’s CEO, and Tang, the company’s Chief Product Officer, have since seen $2 billion wiped out from each of their fortunes.
Fang, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, lost $2.38 billion, stripping him of his billionaire status.
Xu and Tang, meanwhile, have managed to hold onto their 10-figure status, with each still worth $1.2 billion, according to Bloomberg’s index.
San Francisco-based DoorDash, including its subsidiaries like fellow delivery service Caviar, has an overwhelming 65% of the market share — nearly three times the 23% of the next closest rival, Uber Eats.
Instacart, which specializes in grocery deliveries rather than takeout meals from restaurants, has a mere 1% of the market share, according to Yahoo, though the platform still at one point made its founder and CEO a billionaire.
Apoorva Mehta had a net worth of $3.58 billionaire in March 2021.
However, his wealth dropped a whopping $2.7 billion since, leaving him with an $863 million fortune, per Bloomberg.
When Mehta’s net worth peaked, so did Instacart’s market cap, which was valued at as much as $39 billion in March 2021.
Instacart went public in last month — at a share price that valued the company at roughly one-quarter of its 2021 valuation.
The company was trading at $26.83 per share on Wednesday, giving it a $7.4 billion market cap.
Lastly, Jitse Groen, the chief executive of Dutch food-ordering company Just Eat Takeaway, lost $1.69 billion since his October 2020 peak of $1.97 billion.
Groen’s net worth now sits at $274 million, according to Bloomberg.
Some 86% of his fortune disappeared after the company’s share price tumbled, according to Bloomberg.
Just Eat’s stock has crashed nearly 50% so far this year, to $2.28.
Representatives for DoorDash, Instacart and Just Eat did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
