Restaurants, one of the worst-hit sectors by COVID-19, saw an overwhelming surge in online food orders on the new year’s eve. All thanks to food delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato.
On Friday, Deepinder Goyal, Co-founder of Zomato, in a tweet-storm announced that their company recorded a whopping 60% higher sales figure on December 31st when compared to the previous new year’s eve.
According to Goyal, peak orders per minute was able to hit 4,254 which resulted in the GMV aka gross merchandise value of ₹75 crores for the entire day.
A spokesperson from Swiggy also reported observing the same trend and said the company witnessed double traffic during dinnertime on this new years eve when compared to the same day a year earlier. According to some sources, Swiggy clocked over 5,500 online food orders per minute on 31st December eve.
The Swiggy spokesperson also mentioned that the growth they observed in Tier-II cities seemingly outperformed the growth in metros and altogether December 31, 2020, was their biggest ever single day until now.
The effect of the global COVID-19 pandemic on the restaurant industry has been very devastating. With the lockdown and social-distancing norms coming into existence, restaurants and pubs had to completely shut down their sit-down service. This led to many establishment owners struggling to pay rent and keep their heads above water.
That being said, now, however, most restaurants have adopted the takeaway and delivery service fuelled by Swiggy and Zomato which has led to their survival.
Goyal, in his tweetstorm, also mentioned that the demand they witnessed was much bigger than what Zomato anticipated and therefore it resulted in them running out of delivery partners much before the peak time.
He added that Zomato could have easily hit 100 crores in GMV on new year’s eve if they had unconstrained supply and therefore he hopes to be better next time.
On the night of December 31, Zomato had 100,000 delivery partners and according to Goyal customer complaint rates and failure were at an all-time low. Similarly, Swiggy also hit a peak when it comes to orders received per minute during the New Year’s eve but declined to share the exact number.
According to executives at big multi-chain restaurants, deliveries helped them win big during the New Year’s Eve as otherwise business would have been experiencing a 65-70% slump on that night given curfews are still being exercised in some states.
Speaking about the same, a Swiggy spokesperson mentioned that restaurants which were well prepared with their kitchen staffing saw huge participation and that cancellations were quite low even during the peak.
All in all, backed by delivery platforms, the restaurant industry started off the new year on a positive note and hopefully will steadily climb their way to recovery from here on out.
Also, one must note that the bolstered sales during the new year’s eve is received closely after Zomato’s recent announcement of closing a funding round of $660 million at a valuation of $3.9 billion.
Goyal said that a $140 million worth secondary transaction is underway as well, out of which $30 million has already been disbursed amid their former employees to provide them with liquidity. Stay tuned for more updates.
