New Year is a time of celebration and happiness. Worldwide people welcome New Year with lots of excitement and enthusiasm. This year, due to rising concerns regarding new Omicron variant of Corona virus, people were restricted within their homes but this couldn't stop them form celebrating New Year Eve in their own unique way.
Ordering food online emerged as one of the most favourite way of celebrating New Year this time. This trend ultimately brought huge benefits to the Indian online food delivery platforms, Zomato and Swiggy.
Both Swiggy and Zomato crossed 2 million orders on their platforms by just 9 pm on December 31. Swiggy touched a record high of 9,049 orders per minute and broke its own earlier record of 5,500 orders per minute.
"Taking a tweet break. Crossed 2 million orders on Swiggy and many more lined up. BRB!," Swiggy posted on its Twitter handle at 9.06 pm.
taking a tweet break. crossed 2 million orders on Swiggy and many more lined up. brb!
— Swiggy (@swiggy_in) December 31, 2021
Swiggy said its top five orders placed on New Year's Eve were Chicken Biryani, Butter Naan, Masala Dosa, Paneer Butter Masala, and Chicken Fried Rice.
if top 5 orders placed today throughout India for Swiggy were added in one cart, this is what it would look like 🤯 pic.twitter.com/EjTyx1Ik5W
— Swiggy (@swiggy_in) December 31, 2021
the verdict is out 🥳
— Swiggy (@swiggy_in) December 31, 2021
we are a biryani loving nation and it shows. no wonder 1229 biryanis were marked 'delivered' in a minute! https://t.co/xaaEi1JRiO pic.twitter.com/CCsWhrdBJM
Taking to Twitter, Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal celebrated two million orders. "All this food was worth Rs 91 crore," he said.
All this food was worth ₹91 crores. https://t.co/9iOs3oKAdW
— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) December 31, 2021
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic, New Year's Eve has been an engaging time for the food delivery platforms. Both Swiggy and Zomato recorded the highest-ever orders for New Year's Eve dinner in 2020 and expected it to surpass last year's digits this year, The Economics Times reported.
With restrictions and night curfews across states, most restaurants are doubling down on delivery efforts and their cloud kitchens as eating out took a hit.
Swiggy and Zomato have been expanding their delivery fleets, support, and operations staff to anticipate a record spike in orders.
"Starting from April, May, June with the second lockdown, we saw consumers take to food delivery in a much stronger way than we ever saw in the past. And that momentum has continued even into the next quarter. With more consumers coming back to the big cities as offices open, that is going to have a meaningful impact on our lunch orders and ordering frequencies in general. But other interesting mentions would be if you look at the average spending from transacting users that has increased by more than 50% since pre-COVID. We are talking about monthly spends not per order spend. There is some softening in the order values, food only for entertainment is not happening. There is food for entertainment as well as food for convenience,"Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety said in a recent interview.