With night curfews and other COVID19 restrictions across states following a spike in cases, most ditched their regular New Year outing and opted for ordering food online and enjoying it with loved ones. Online food delivery platform Swiggy said that it broke its record of 5,500 food orders per minute on December 31, ending the night with an order peak of 9,500 orders per minute for food alone. The company claimed that this is the highest ever for food delivery in India.
"This year we exceeded all our plans by a big margin and were overwhelmed by the customer response. OPM reached almost 9,500 level by early dinner itself, which is almost 1.7x of last year's peak," the company said in a statement.
"As the evening progressed, we saw a 177 per cent jump in the number of active users on the platform," it added.
The platform had crossed 2 million orders as of 9pm on Friday (December 31). The new users on our platform increased by 80 per cent showing that there was a strong intent for customers to order online. In tier 2 and 3 cities, this number was 68 per cent and cities like Mangaluru, Patna, Ludhiana and Surat saw the highest new users on New Year's Eve.
Among tier 2 and 3 cities, Vizag did the highest orders per minute at 190. Cities like Rourkela and Palakkad witnessed a 300 per cent growth in orders.
The company said that reaching the milestone of over two million orders in one night would have been impossible without the support of lakhs of partners on the road.
(With IANS inputs)
