What India ate/ordered most in 2021? Swiggy report throws up surprises

Indians ordered Pan Asian, Indian and Chinese food the most in 2021, followed by Mexican and Korean, states the Swiggy’s sixth annual StatEATstics report released on Tuesday (December 22).

Biryani remains Indians’ favourite ordering menu for the sixth year in a row, with samosa (5 million orders) being the top snack, followed by Pav Bhaji (2.1 million), says the report. Samosa’s orders were six times more than Chicken Wings.

People ordered 115 biryanis per minute with the report saying that over 4.25 lakh new users made their Swiggy debut by ordering a chicken biryani. Gulab Jamun (2.1 million orders), meanwhile, was the most ordered dessert while Rasmalai (1.27 million) came second.

In 2020, 90 biryanis were ordered per minute, which has gone up to 115 in 2021, which comes to 1.91 per second, said a company statement.

“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,” a statement issued by Swiggy stated.

Bengaluru emerged as the most health-conscious city followed by Hyderabad and Mumbai. Bengaluru also topped the charts for ordering most dosas this year.

Chennai was the most generous city where a Swiggy delivery partner was tipped ₹ 6,000 for a single order.

Also read: Swiggy’s big bet on Instamart, and the power of Q-commerce

A new trend shows increasing popularity of health-focused restaurants with the search for healthy food on Swiggy doubling in 2021. Such restaurants show a 200% increase in orders.

The StatEATstics order analysis is based on the orders received by Swiggy for all its services that includes food delivery, grocery on Instamart, pick up and drop service by Swiggy Genie and HealthHub.

Instamart, for instance, delivered over 28 million packs of fruits and vegetables. Tomatoes, bananas, onions, potatoes, and green chilies were the top five fruits and veggies. Instamart also delivered 1 lakh masks and over 4 lakh soaps and handwashes.

Genie mostly delivered food, grocery and medicines (in the order of sales). About 20,000 of food orders on Genie were for pet food. However, the “medicine” category on Genie reported the most phenomenal growth with a rise of 288%.

During the COVID second wave (April- June 2021), Swiggy Genie delivered over 600 meals per day, prepared by COVID heroes such as Sathya Sai Trust and Hyatt Regency among others.

The report says that a Swiggy Genie delivery partner from Bengaluru travelled 42 km to deliver an Oxygen flowmeter. While the maximum distance travelled by a delivery partner was 55.5kms to deliver a food package in Bengaluru, the shortest distance was to a store 200 meters from the customer’s doorstep to pick up a tongue cleaner.