As India was celebrating new year’s eve last weekend, the food delivery giants Zomato and Swiggy saw an unprecedented spike in their order numbers like every year.

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal tweeted on Saturday evening that the foodtech giant saw a 45% surge in order volumes on December 31, 2022 as compared to the previous year. It is to be noted that Zomato processed over 2.5 Mn orders the previous year on new year’s eve.

Moreover, Goyal also claimed in a separate Tweet that the number of orders delivered on Saturday exceeded the sum of all orders delivered in the first three years of Zomato’s food delivery service.

On the other hand, Zomato’s rival Swiggy also saw a huge surge in orders. Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety tweeted on Saturday evening that the platform delivered 1.3 Mn orders as of 6:33 pm. In 2021, the company claimed to have processed over 2 Mn orders through the day.

“The party is already off to a fast start – we have already delivered over 1.3 Mn orders and counting. Our fleet & restaurant partners are geared up to make this NYE unforgettable,” Majety said.

During last year’s New Year’s Eve, Majety said that Swiggy processed one order every three minutes in 2014 on occasion to reach over 9000 orders per minute in 2021. Swiggy said it had seen a peak of 5,500 orders per minute on New Year’s Eve in 2020.

Quick Commerce Joins The Fray

Meanwhile, Zomato-owned quick commerce platform Blinkit also saw some unexceptional numbers on the day. Blinkit CEO Albinder Dhindsa said that as of 5.45 pm on December 31, some in Bengaluru had placed the biggest party order worth INR 28,962.

“56,437 chips are en route right now and should be delivered in the next 9 mins,” Dhindsa tweeted. Besides, one in every three orders in Delhi on Saturday contained a soft drink on the platform.

Interestingly, Swiggy’s quick commerce arm Instamart also saw 1.76 lakh packets of chips being ordered on the platform as of 7 pm on Saturday.

The online food services market in India is expected to clock a GMV of $13 Bn, as per a 2021 report by RedSeer. On the other hand, the quick commerce market in India is expected to reach $5 Bn by 2025 from the current $0.3 Bn.

Zomato went public in 2021 and Swiggy entered the decacorn club in 2022 after raising $700 Mn in a funding round led by Invesco. However, Zomato did not see a remarkable performance on the stock market last year. From a market cap of over INR 1 Lakh Cr ($14 Bn) after its listing in July 2021, Zomato had lost over 60% of its market value in December 2022. 

Swiggy’s net loss jumped 2.2X to INR 3,628.9 Cr in FY22 from INR 1,616.9 Cr in FY21 as its expenses more than doubled. Moreover, its total revenue grew 2.2X to INR 6,119.8 Cr in FY22 from INR 2,675.9 Cr in FY21.

Both Zomato and Swiggy remained under the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) lens throughout the year for alleged anti-competitive behaviour pertaining to pricing and discounts.