2020 was quite the year for food delivery, especially due to lockdown, as it began to be the way for many to be able to eat out, as well as for restaurants to survive amid the coronavirus pandemic. While the major cities slowly returned to pre-COVID numbers in delivery, tier-2 and tier-3 cities began to surpass them. New Year’s Eve turned out to be a cherry on the cake, as restrictions and curfews were placed in multiple cities, due to which people stayed inside. It turned out to be the best for Swiggy and Zomato, with both companies recording their highest orders per minute.
Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal tweeted that the company reached a peak of 4,254 orders per minute, and a Swiggy source told TNM that the company crossed 5,500 orders per minute on NYE. Swiggy’s CEO Vivek Sunder told ETNow that it was the best day the company had.
A Swiggy spokesperson said that traffic increased by 100% during dinnertime, with Tier 2 and 3 cities like Jaipur and Vizag increasing by almost 200%. Swiggy said that Tier 3 and 4 cities such as Berhampur, Rourkela and Karimnagar saw a 150-200% growth, which was higher than what it observed in the metros.
Swiggy said new users on the platform doubled, “showing that there was a strong intent for customers to order online”.
In a series of tweets, Deepinder Goyal said that the company’s gross merchandise value (GMV) was 60% more than that of last New Year’s Eve. “That's a GMV of ₹75 crore in one single day, with peak orders per minute (OPM) rate of 4,254,” he tweeted.
He also added that the demand was more than the company could process, and that they ran out of delivery partner capacity much before peak time. “If we had unconstrained supply, we could have hit ₹100 crores of GMV yesterday. Need to do better next time,” he tweeted, saying that nearly 1,00,000 delivery personnel delivered orders yesterday.
“Huge participation from restaurants, who were also very well prepared with staffing their kitchens. The restaurant driven cancellations were quite low even during the peak,” a Swiggy spokesperson said.
Goyal also said that failure and customer complaint rates are at an all-time low for food delivery in India. “This is a testament to the work everyone in the ecosystem has put in to make this a delightful experience for customers,” he added.