Instashop

InstaShop is a Dubai headquartered on-demand delivery marketplace founded in 2015 by Greek entrepreneurs John Tsioris and Ioanna Angelidaki, who identified the inefficiency of the traditional phone-based grocery ordering process in the UAE and built a mobile-first app connecting consumers directly with their local supermarkets, pharmacies, pet shops, specialty stores, bakeries, and florists for delivery typically within 30 to 60 minutes. The platform operates as a B2C and B2B marketplace model, generating revenue through commissions paid by its approximately 1,500 partner vendors, and offers more than one million products spanning groceries, pharmacy essentials, organic produce, fresh meat and seafood, baby care, cosmetics, perfumes, electronics, fitness nutrition, and home services including JustLife cleaning and Washmen laundry and dry cleaning. InstaShop expanded from Dubai across the UAE into Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, and Lebanon by 2018, following a minority investment by Souq.com in October 2016, which linked Amazon to InstaShop's cap table when Souq.com was acquired by Amazon in 2017. In August 2020 InstaShop was acquired by Berlin-based Delivery Hero in a deal reportedly valued at 360 million dollars, at which point the platform had reached a gross merchandise value of approximately 360 million dollars annually, and continued operating as an independent brand under Delivery Hero. In November 2023 founder John Tsioris stepped down as CEO and was succeeded by Nikola Cabarkapa, and in February 2025, Delivery Hero's MENA subsidiary Talabat Holding fully acquired InstaShop in a deal valued at 32 million dollars as part of an internal restructuring, with InstaShop continuing to operate as an independent brand within Talabat's Grocery and Retail vertical. In 2024 InstaShop generated a gross merchandise value of 631 million dollars, representing 16 percent year-over-year growth and approximately 8 percent of Talabat's overall 2024 GMV.