Several food and grocery delivery firms witnessed their highest ever single-day orders on New Year eve, December 31.
Photograph: Courtesy, Swiggy
Zomato achieved a record-breaking number of orders on its app.
The company carried out nearly as many orders on December 31 as the total for the equivalent day in the period from 2015 to 2020.
Senior executives of these platforms took to social media to announce these milestones.
Deepinder Goyal, chief executive officer (CEO), Zomato, wrote on X: “Hit our all-time high orders in a day on @zomato. Immense gratitude to all.”
Goyal said tips of over Rs 97 lakh were given to delivery partners on Zomato on December 31, while over 320,000 delivery partners across Zomato and its quick commerce business, Blinkit, were serving customers.
Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa said the platform saw its highest ever single-day orders and also orders per minute.
“We have already hit the highest: ever order in a day, order per minute, soft drinks & tonic water sold in a day, chips sold in a day, tips given to riders in a day. And it’s not slowing down,” Dhindsa said in a post.
Zomato’s Bengaluru-based rival Swiggy also had a similar run, surpassing previous records.
“NYE ’24 broke all records across Swiggy and Swiggy Instamart,” said Rohit Kapoor, CEO, Swiggy Food Marketplace.
The company witnessed almost a million active users on the Swiggy app in the last hour.
Swiggy saw a peak of 1,244 biryanis ordered per minute, reaching over 480,000.
The top three cities in biryani orders were Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai.
The firm’s quick commerce business Instamart executed orders 1.6 times more per minute than the previous record high during the World Cup final, and surpassed the last New Year eve orders by evening.
Kapoor announced free deliveries throughout the night across quick commerce and food orders.
Swiggy said more than 10 million people placed orders for others this year.
It promptly responded and sent goodies to the one user who had nothing sent to him and needed some pampering.
The big orders had started coming in early to beat the rush.
A customer in Hyderabad placed 33 orders.
Mumbai took the crown for ordering the highest number of idli-vadas.
In A single order for 95 samosas originated in Bengaluru, while one for 200 packets of ketchup was from Surat.
Zepto, the Mumbai-based quick commerce firm that recently turned a unicorn, got a massive uptick in orders.
The company saw huge demand for products like anti-hangover PartySmart pills, ice cream, soft drinks, and gifting products.
The platform sold 610 kg of ice in an hour, while sales from gifting products spiked by 63 per cent on December 31.
Zepto delivered 250,000 cups of NIC Chocochip ice-cream and over 100,000 cans of Thums Up for free.
“Numbers like this one make me pinch myself. Sometimes I honestly can’t believe how big Zepto has become in two years,” CEO Aadit Palicha wrote in a post on X.
According to the “buy now pay later” app Simpl’s Checkout Scan, the transactions on December 31 and early hours of January 1 were 55 per cent higher than the same period in 2022 and 2023.
At a platform level, Simpl registered an increase of over one-third in consumer transactions with merchants such as Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit, and Zepto being most preferred in food delivery and quick commerce space.
While Bengaluru, New Delhi, and Mumbai saw the highest number of orders among the metros, cities such as Jaipur, Chandigarh, and Ahmedabad too witnessed significant demand.
Simpl said party preparations began an hour late with a majority of the orders placed, through the platform, between 8 pm and 9 pm.
In 2022, the highest number of orders was recorded between 7 pm and 8 pm.
There was an average increase in order value by nearly a fifth on December 31, 2023.
