Curfews help Swiggy, Zomato serve record food orders on New Year's Eve

At peak, while Swiggy fulfilled 5,500 orders per minute, Zomato clocked in 4,254 orders per minute

With people choosing to stay at home due to Covid-19 related restrictions and curfews in several cities, food delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato witnessed orders shooting through the roof on New Year’s Eve as people ordered in biryanis, pizzas and cakes to ring in 2021. 

According to sources, while Swiggy recorded peak number of orders per minute at 5,500 on Thursday night, Zomato served 4,254 orders per minute during peak time, said the company’s founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal on Twitter.

“The demand last night was much higher than what we could process. We ran out of delivery partner capacity much before peak time. If we had unconstrained supply, we could have hit Rs 100 crore of GMV yesterday. Need to do better next time,” said Goyal in a series of tweets. The Tiger Global-backed unicorn clocked 60 per cent more GMV than last new year’s eve at Rs 75 crore in one single day. It worked with 100,000 delivery partners to deliver all these orders.

Zomato at one point saw 140,000 live orders across the country. “20,000 biryanis in transit. And 16,000 pizzas; 40 per cent of them extra cheese pizzas,” said Goyal on Twitter.

Traffic increased by 100 per cent during dinner time on the Swiggy platform with Tier 2, 3 cities such as Jaipur, and Vizag seeing a rise of almost 200 per cent, said a Swiggy spokesperson. “Tier 3,4 cities such as Berhampur, Rourkela, Karimnagar saw 150 to 200 per cent growth, higher than what we have observed in the metros,” said the spokesperson. 

The number of new users increased 2x on the Swiggy platform, showing that there was a strong intent for customers to order online. According to data, online food ordering volumes had crashed by 90 per cent as the lockdown started in March. In October, while Swiggy had said that its pan-India food delivery had recovered to around 80-85 per cent of pre-Covid order value, Goyal had claimed to reach pre-Covid level peaks.

“I strongly believe that Indian startups do not need to look out to other countries for growth. There's a tremendous amount of market depth in India. Generally, what works elsewhere, doesn’t win in India. And what wins in India, doesn’t work elsewhere,” wrote Goyal on Twitter as his company served its highest order velocity ever on Thursday night.