On Swiggy's first New Year Eve in 2014, when it was a three-month-old food delivery platform, it clocked one order every three minutes, according to its co-founder and CEO Sriharsha Majety. He even shared a referral code a few months later to pull in new users.
Six years later, on December 31, 2021, Swiggy clocked an order peak of 9,500 orders per minute, breaking its own record of 5,500 orders per minute the previous year. It crossed the two million mark in total food orders by 9 pm, underscoring the huge demand for online food orders amidst night curfews in light of the Omicron variant scare.
To be sure, this doesn't capture cancellations and also doesn't include numbers from its instant grocery delivery service Instamart. While Swiggy did not divulge the total order value, a spokesperson said in a statement that this (orders per minute or OPM) is the highest number for food delivery in India. Its arch-rival Zomato touched a high of 7,100 OPM as of 8:20 pm on December 31.
Further, Swiggy Instamart recorded 63% more orders and a 74% increase in GMV (gross merchanise value) compared to the rest of the month, beating its own previous Christmas day peak. The order intensity peaked closer to dinner, with 17,662 being placed in 30 minutes alone.
New users on the platform went up by 80%. It also saw traction in smaller cities, with Mangaluru, Patna, Ludhiana, and Surat clocking the highest new users on New Year's Eve. Its top 5 cities in terms of demand were Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai.
Among tier 2&3 cities, Vizag had the highest orders per minute at 190. Cities like Rourkela and Palakkad witnessed a 300 percent growth in orders. Swiggy said it gave special incentives to its delivery partners on December 1 and January 1 to compensate them for their efforts amidst the record demand.
Some of the most popular dishes included Chicken Biryani, Butter Naan, Paneer Butter Masala, Chicken Fried Rice, Tandoori Chicken, and Garlic Breadsticks.
"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," Majety said in a recent interview to Moneycontrol.
Swiggy is reportedly raising a new $700 million round at a valuation of $10 billion.
Swiggy and Zomato slugged it out on New Year's Eve, as both platforms saw overwhelming demand online, beating their own previous records. Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said Zomato received over 2.5 million orders worth Rs 91 crore. On average, they typically clock 1.3-1.5 million orders in a day.
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