New Year’s Eve in India is no longer just about countdowns and fireworks. It’s also about apps crashing, riders racing against the clock, and millions of people ordering food at the same moment. December 31, 2025, was proof of how deeply food delivery has become part of the celebration ritual — and the numbers tell a wild story.
December 31, 2025, was absolutely crazy for India’s food delivery sector. Imagine 1.75 million orders flying out the door, grapes selling 78 times faster than normal, and biryani orders hitting 1,336 per minute. Crazy, right? This wasn’t your regular busy day; this was India celebrating the arrival of 2026 in full force.
When Everyone Went Nuts For Grapes
Here’s something unexpected: grapes became the hottest item of the night. Swiggy Instamart saw grape searches jump 78 times above normal levels. Swiggy Co-founder Phani Kishan Addepalli shared,
“Today, Instamart saw 235,000 searches for grapes in the first half of the day, with searching starting as early as 5 am.”
Zepto wasn’t far behind, reporting three times more grape orders on December 30 itself. People were clearly planning. The Spanish tradition of eating 12 grapes at midnight has caught on big time in India.
The Food That Made New Year’s Night
Biryani Ruled Everything
Biryani was king. No surprise there. Indians love their biryani. Swiggy clocked 218,993 biryani orders before 7:30 PM. The peak? An insane 1,336 orders per minute just before 8 PM.
Pizza And Burgers Weren’t Sleeping Either
By 8:30 PM, Swiggy had delivered over 218,000 pizzas and 216,000 burgers. Magicpin reported Gurugram alone ordered more than 25,000 Margherita pizzas. That’s a lot of cheese.
Delhi NCR Being Classic
Through Magicpin, Delhi NCR ordered nearly 75,000 plates of Butter Chicken, Biryani, and Dal Makhani, which rounded out the top three.
The Last-Hour Madness
Between 11 PM and midnight, things got hectic. Swiggy Instamart saw massive spikes:
- Cakes: 7x jump
- BBQ items: 6x increase
- Drinks: 3.5x up
- Party glasses: 2.5x more
- Pizza bases: 1.8x higher
Card game searches tripled. Tonic water became the trending drink. Classic last-minute party scramble.
Around 10:30 PM, dessert orders poured in. Rasmalai, Gajar Halwa, and Gulab Jamun topped the list. Traditional sweets still hit different.
Platform Wars And Record Numbers
Zomato and Blinkit delivered at a record pace yesterday, unaffected by calls for strikes that many of us heard over the past few days.
Support from local law enforcement helped keep the small number of miscreants in check, enabling 4.5 lakh+ delivery partners across both…
— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) January 1, 2026
Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato and Blinkit, shared that both platforms together delivered an all-time high of 7.5 million orders to over 6.3 million customers during the day.
Magicpin had its busiest night ever. Orders climbed from 8:30 PM onwards. By 11:30 PM, they were processing nearly 1,500 orders per minute. They closed the night with 150,000 total orders.
Small Towns Showed Up Big
Swiggy Instamart saw strong traction beyond the metros. Places like Lonavala, Karimnagar, Saharanpur, Davanagere, Patiala, and Meerut were all ordering big.
Tier-2 Cities Delivered
Swiggy’s food delivery also lit up in Patna, Surat, Vadodara, Nagpur, Jaipur, Pune, and Indore. The reach of these platforms is genuinely impressive now.
The Strike Drama
This is where things got messy. Gig worker unions called for a nationwide strike on NYE. But companies say it barely made a dent.
Deepinder Goyal posted:
“Zomato and Blinkit delivered at a record pace on December 31, unaffected by calls for strikes that many of us heard over the past few days. Support from local law enforcement helped keep the small number of miscreants in check… This happened without any additional incentives for delivery partners. NYE does see higher incentives than usual days, and December 31 was no different than past NYE days.”
Gauri Devidayal, Co-founder and CEO, Food Matters Group, backed this up:
“Business as usual, and we had no disruption to deliveries, leading to one of the highest sales days.”
But unions tell a different story. The Telangana Gig and Platform Workers’ Union and the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers claimed that more than 2.1 lakh delivery workers participated in the strike, causing delays.
Another union, the Gig & Platform Service Workers Union (GIPSWU), said more than one lakh workers joined the strike, severely impacting businesses.
Late-Night Snack Attack
People kept ordering well past dinner. Nearly 35,000 plates of fried food went out with Diet Cokes and other drinks through Magicpin. Dessert orders tripled compared to last year.
Conclusion
Honestly, these numbers are mind-blowing. The fact that platforms handled this kind of traffic without crashing is impressive. Ten years ago, none of this would have been possible.
But the strike situation leaves questions. Companies are celebrating record numbers, while unions claim massive participation. Neither version can be entirely right. Either the strike didn’t land as expected, the impact is being downplayed, or the truth sits somewhere in the uncomfortable middle. One thing is clear — India’s food-delivery ecosystem has reached a scale where even disruption struggles to slow it down.
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