India welcomed the new year 2023 with fireworks, fun and lots of food. Food delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato said they recorded a massive surge in orders on December 31, as people geared up to ring in the new year.
Orders for New Year parties started ringing in early as 6 pm, prompting Zomato chief Deepinder Goyal to tell customers to place their orders early to avoid year-end rushes. He also warned against a potential server crash. Zomato delivered a whopping 2 million orders on the last day of the year.
"We have touched last year's OPM already! Folks, please order now to avoid last-minute rush, and potential server FUs," he said, and added in a separate tweet, "45 per cent up since last year, so far!! Seems like we will hit crazy milestones today. IF we manage to stay alive. Nervous AF."
"Fun fact: orders delivered today >> sum of all orders delivered in the first 3 years of our food delivery service," Goyal shared. He also stepped out himself to deliver a few orders.
Interestingly, "16,514 biryanis" were ordered off the platform.
A hit of the New Year party emerged to be chips. Yes, you read that right. Albinder Dhindsa, CEO of Zomato-owned Blinkit shared that there were 56,437 orders for chips. He also tweeted that someone in Bengaluru placed the largest party order on the platform for Rs 28,962.
Zomato rival Swiggy also had some fascinating stats to share from the orders they received this NYE. Swiggy deliveries reinforced biryani's place as the most ordered dish, with 3.50 lakh orders on Saturday. By 10.25 pm, the app dispatched over 61,000 pizzas across the country. As per a Twitter poll, 75.4 per cent of orders came for Hyderabadi Biryani, followed by Lucknowi-14.2 per cent and Kolkata-10.4 per cent.
Pizza was also among the crowd-pleasers. Swiggy said that 61,287 pizzas were delivered via Dominos Pizza. "We can only imagine the number of oregano packets going with them."
Elsewhere, Swiggy Instamart orders show that partygoers called for 1.76 lakh packets of chips as of 7 PM Saturday.
"13,984 packets of nachos, 14,453 lemons, 14,890 sodas" were delivered before the night was out, Swiggy added. 2757 packets of Durex condoms were also delivered, and the platform made a tongue-in-cheek joke saying "4212 more" orders were needed to make it "6969" so they could say "nice".
Swiggy shared more wholesome statistics of 178,459 people who ordered food for others on New Year's Eve, and "about 12,344 people across India" ordered khichdi prompting Swiggy to tweet out "no matter what, some things will always feel like home."
(With inputs from PTI)