Meet Priya Monga, GM of Instacart Business

Instacart’s Priya Monga is no stranger to breaking new ground. Throughout her career, she’s found herself at the starting point of many new ventures. Now, as she leads the newly launched Instacart Business, she’s setting her sights on unlocking new ways to help businesses find value on Instacart and keep them coming back for more. We sat down with Priya to talk about her career, her vision for Instacart Business, and her dashed Broadway dreams.  

Tell us a bit about Instacart Business. What is it, and how will it contribute to Instacart’s future success?

Over the last 10 years, we’ve built an incredibly successful consumer marketplace; we are the #1 grocery technology company in the U.S. 

In the past year, we started noticing people have been using Instacart for things other than getting goods for their households. They’ve been using it for their businesses as well, shopping from retailers they trust to get the food and supplies they need to run their day-to-day operations. 

Instacart is a staple for a lot of businesses that are looking for more flexibility, want to reduce costs, and are sick of juggling multiple vendors. Many of these businesses can’t reach order minimums for large distributors, and holding too much inventory can be really prohibitive for small business owners.

Today we have offices, retail stores, daycares, schools, medical facilities, assisted living homes, restaurants, and more finding value in using Instacart to support them in running their businesses. Across the board, we know we have a service that works extremely well for businesses today, and we’re now going deeper to understand how to unlock more value for these customers by leaning into Instacart’s strengths. As we start building more product experiences for our business customers, we believe it will have a massive impact on our business growth. 

What is your vision for Instacart Business? 

It’s exciting when you build an incredible product like a consumer marketplace that extends to a new use case so cleanly. That’s why I’m so excited to be working on Instacart Business and to work alongside our product teams to build more experiences tailored to the businesses that use our platform today. 

I truly believe we can build the world’s best B2B marketplace for businesses to get the groceries and supplies they need. To do this, we’ll need to unlock the best selection for businesses, offer the most competitive pricing, and continue to be the most convenient platform for them. Our goal is to be the best partner to these businesses and save them time and money to help them focus on what they do best, which is serving their customers and running their business.

Given that the GM of Instacart Business role is new, what are you hoping to achieve within it?

There are standard things I want to understand about the role that will hopefully make future GMs more successful at Instacart. Things like: What’s your role vs. other functions’ role? How do you ensure you’re setting a clear vision and goals for all the cross-functional teams you’re working with, and that that vision ladders up to overarching business objectives? Not only that, but also empowering these cross-functional teams to own their expertise and give them the space to run with it. 

As a GM, you have to lean in and flex in different ways, depending on the problem you’re solving. There are parts of the role that I hope to be able to playbook with other GMs to make others successful in the future. The beauty of generalist roles is that you get the breadth of experience but at the same time– depending on the area you’re owning– you’ll need to flex different skills. I think there are also some things that are going to be unique to Instacart Business, and I will need to flex some muscles and skills that others won’t have to.

How did you transition from your previous role? 

I was a Chief of Staff supporting Fidji Simo [Instacart’s CEO] and our senior leadership team for a year and a half before transitioning into my new role in December. The amazing part of the Chief of Staff role is you get an incredible seat at the table with such a wide purview of how a company runs and operates. So, for me this GM role and leading a new business line felt like a natural transition. 

That being said, I’ve always tried to focus more on the work itself and worried less about job titles. My goal is to find work that I truly enjoy, that taps into my strengths and areas where I really want to grow. I wasn’t trying to jump into a GM role. For me, it was important to work on a problem that I was obsessed with and super excited about.

I started my career in SMB sales; I’ve worked on enterprise sales, marketing and partnerships, and did a quick stint in product as well. For this role, it was less about being a GM and more about growing a new business within our company, and specifically working with customers again. It’s also about having the opportunity to flex the skills I’ve gained throughout my career in sales, marketing, product, and partnerships.

Can you tell us about any upcoming milestones for Instacart Business?

Our first big milestone was telling the world that we are open for business and using this as an opportunity to not only put a spotlight on the products that businesses already know and love about Instacart, but also announce upcoming products. With this rollout, we’re starting to test out new products and functionalities such as flexible credit lines and tax exemptions—things that we’ve heard directly from businesses as being important requirements to using Instacart or opportunities to use Instacart more.  

But that’s really just the beginning. 

We are focused on continuing to activate and grow our existing customer base, build foundational product experiences that will unlock the next wave of growth from large businesses, and that sets us on the path to build the world’s biggest B2B marketplace for supplies and groceries.

What would people be surprised to learn about you? 

When I was younger my dream job was to be on Broadway. I was a theater nerd. When I was 8, I auditioned to be young Nala in the Broadway production of The Lion King. I made it to the final audition, but I didn’t get the part. While that was the end of my professional Broadway career, I now channel my inner Broadway star every day in the shower and occasionally grace karaoke stages.

Any career advice you can pass on?

I think it’s important to be really clear on three things as you’re building your career: what are you optimizing for, what are your strengths and what energizes you. Remember that these things will change and evolve as you do, so it’s important that you’re always recalibrating. So far in my career, I’ve typically found myself optimizing for learning new subjects, which is why I often take on roles where I’m either the first person to do it or where we’re in “build” mode. I’m not afraid to make a lot of mistakes and learn fast – as much as it’s uncomfortable for me at the time, it’s also where I thrive and get energy. When you’re like me and are constantly stretching yourself, it’s also important to focus on small wins and your strengths, and not wallow in your weaknesses. Being in build mode inevitably means being in a learning mode –so to me success is not necessarily how well I did on a given project or in a meeting, but rather how much I learned and how I’m going to take these learnings to get 1% better, one day at a time.   

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Instacart is the leading grocery technology company in North America, partnering with more than 1,400 national, regional, and local retail banners to deliver from more than 80,000 stores across more than 14,000 cities in North America. To read more Instacart posts, you can browse the company blog or search by keyword using the search bar at the top of the page.