Food delivery platforms ended 2023, clocking their highest ever orders on New Year’s Eve, according to statistics shared by these firms.
The chief executive officers of all start-ups, from Zomato-owned Blinkit to Zepto and Swiggy Instamart, took to X (formerly Twitter) to share order volumes, comparing them to the same period last year. The companies also shared insights on what users ordered to ring in 2024.
Quick-commerce firms Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto said their Sunday order count surpassed the total orders on Dec. 31, 2022. Food delivery platforms Zomato and Swiggy hit several milestones as well.
“It’s just 5:15 p.m., and we’ve already crossed the total number of orders we did on New Year’s Eve 2022!” Albinder Dhindsa, chief executive officer at Blinkit, said on X on Dec. 31. The company has hit its highest-ever orders per minute, with chips and sodas being the most-sold items in a day. As many as 1.47 lakh packets of chips, over 2 lakh soft drinks, 68,231 bottles of soda, and 2,412 packets of ice cubes were ordered, according to Dhindsa.
A user from Lucknow who placed an order worth Rs 33,683 on Blinkit was the highest spender on the platform till early evening on Dec. 31, Dhindsa said.
However, on the same day, the record was beaten by a user in Bengaluru and later by a user in Mumbai.
“We’ve delivered almost as many orders on NYE 23 as we did on NYE 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 combined,” Zomato Chief Executive Officer Deepinder Goyal said in a post on X. The number of times users opened the food delivery app on Sunday surpassed that on Christmas Day. Goyal said 8,422 orders were placed at 8:06 p.m., which translates to about 140 orders every second.
There were over 3.2 lakh delivery partners on the ground, and customers had tipped all agents a total of Rs 97 lakh on Dec. 31, he said.
The trend was similar across rival Swiggy Instamart.
“NYE’24 broke all records across Swiggy and Instamart,” according to Swiggy Food Marketplace Chief Executive Officer Rohit Kapoor.
Instamart has hit the highest-ever orders per minute, surpassing the previous high during the World Cup Finals by 1.6 times, said Kapoor. Tonic water, chips and cocktail mixers were among the most ordered items.
India’s first unicorn of last year said it saw a definitive surge in orders.
“We had the privilege of serving 2.1 million more customers on our platform compared to the same time last year. 1.88 million monthly transacting users in December 2022 versus 4.04 million MTUs in December 2023,” said Aadit Palicha, co-founder and chief executive officer at Zepto.
Sharing insights on X, Palicha said 610 kilogrammes of ice were sold in just an hour. Daily sales from gifting products spiked by 63%. At the same time, PartySmart capsules (anti-hangover) were up three times. week-on-week.
Cloud kitchen players, who typically sell on platforms like Swiggy and Zomato, said their individual businesses were on a high, too.
“Today will be the first instance of us servicing 1,00,000 orders on a single day! Thanks for all the customer love,” Curefoods Pvt. Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ankit Nagori said on X.
Other than food and groceries, travel tech startup Oyo also saw a surge in domestic and international bookings, with 6.2 lakh bookings for New Year Eve, according to Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ritesh Agarwal’s post on X.
“We are up by 37% from last year as last-minute bookings rise.” Ayodhya saw a 70% jump in Oyo app users, compared to Goa (50%) and Nainital (60%), he said.
