The country's love for biryani only seems to be growing as online food delivery platform Swiggy said on Tuesday, December 21, that Indians ordered 115 plates of biryani per minute in 2021. A report released by the company titled ‘Swiggy StatEATstics 2021’ mentioned that over 4.25 lakh new users made their Swiggy debut by ordering a chicken biryani, while the most binged snack of the year was samosa with about 5 million orders on Swiggy.
"Swiggy's sixth annual StatEATstics report reveals how Indians ordered 115 plates of biryani per minute, samosas equal to the population of New Zealand, and enough tomatoes to play the Spanish Tomatina festival for eleven years," the company said in a statement. "In 2020, 90 biryanis were ordered per minute, which has gone up to 115 in 2021, which comes to 1.91 per second," the statement added.
While samosas were ordered six times more than chicken wings, pav bhaji was India's second favourite snack with 2.1 million orders. With a total of 2.1 million orders, gulab jamun was the most ordered dessert on Swiggy followed by rasmalai with 1.27 million orders. The search for healthy food on Swiggy doubled in 2021, and health-focused restaurants on Swiggy HealthHub witnessed a 200% increase in orders. Bengaluru emerged as the most health-conscious city, followed by Hyderabad and Mumbai.
Swiggy’s e-grocery service Instamart delivered over 28 million packs of fruits and vegetables alone in 2021. Tomatoes, bananas, onions, potatoes, and green chilies were the top five fruits and veggies delivered in under 30 minutes. The total bananas ordered on Instamart outweighed the Statue of Liberty by 2.6 times, the company calculated.
The report also highlighted several particular instances. It said that the maximum distance travelled by a delivery partner was 55.5 kms to deliver a food package in Bengaluru, while the shortest was to a store 200 meters away from a customer’s doorstep to pick up a tongue cleaner. Over 80% of customers opted to pay online, instead of paying by cash on delivery. Pan Asian, Indian, and Chinese were the top 3 cuisines ordered, followed by Mexican and Korean.
Among the things India ferried in 2021, food items formed 48% of the total Genie orders and over 20,000 of these orders were for pet food. In one instance, a Swiggy Genie travelled 43.3 kms to deliver a box of brownies to a customer at the Hyderabad airport, while a biryani lover in Kolkata made a Swiggy Genie delivery partner travel 39.3 kms from home to bring her favourite mutton biryani.
Chennai turned out to be the most generous city where a Swiggy delivery partner was tipped Rs 6,000 for a single order. Bengaluru topped the charts for ordering most dosas in 2021.
As part of the war against COVID-19, one lakh masks and over 4 lakh soaps and handwashes were ordered online, the company said. The “medicine” category on Genie registered an increase of 288.79%. Customers ordered a wide range of over-the-counter medicines, including homeopathic and ayurvedic, it added.
With IANS inputs