Zomato’s biggest market in 2025 wasn’t Mumbai or Bengaluru — this city led with 18.72 lakh orders
Zomato's largest market recorded 18.72 lakh orders at the hungriest minute of the day, 'India's National Dinner Time'. It is neither Mumbai nor Bengaluru. Check full statistics here:
Food delivery platform Zomato released a comprehensive data report on 31 December showing India's food delivery patterns observed in 2025. The data revealed that Delhi-NCR recorded 4.22 crore orders more than Mumbai and 4.23 crore orders more than Bengaluru as it drew upon details registered up to 28 December 2025.
The caption to the post stated, “When India gets going, so do we.”
The National Capital Region spearheaded the food delivery space with a robust appetite for online food ordering. Positioned as Zomato's largest market in terms of total order volume, Delhi-NCR reported 18.72 lakh orders at 8:25 PM, marking it as “India's national dinner time”. IIT Kharagpur topped the list of total orders from university campuses with 2.4 lakh orders, followed by IIT BHU and IIT Bombay.
At the international stage, the Deepinder Goyal-led platform showed strong performance, particularly in the Middle East region. The United Arab Emirates recorded 230,000 orders in 2025, followed by 120,000 in the United States and 80,000 in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, Vijaywada Junction reported 1.4 lakh orders this year.
On Raksha Bandhan, 171 sweets were ordered every minute, and on Christmas, 98 cakes were ordered every minute.
Hungriest minutes of the day are listed below:
- 8:25 PM - 18.72 lakh orders
- 8:24 PM - 18.71 lakh orders
- 8:22 PM - 18.69 lakh orders
Zomato offered peak-hour incentives of ₹120 to ₹150 per order from 6:00 PM to midnight.
Zomato hikes delivery partner incentives
Anticipating a surge in demand during the year-end period, Zomato increased incentives for its delivery partners for peak hours on New Year's Eve.
This move came at a time when gig workers across India went on strike to protest, including delivery partners working with food aggregator platforms such as Zomato and Swiggy. Gig workers protested against low pay, a lack of social security, and poor working conditions.
Calling its recent incentive hike unrelated to the strike, Zomato, in a statement, said, “This is part of our standard annual operating protocol during festive periods, which typically see higher earning opportunities due to increased demand,” a spokesperson for Eternal, Zomato's parent company, said in the statement.