India loves to order chicken biriyani, preferably at home. This and other quick bites from Zomato

Zomato's data for 2018 also shows India loves its chicken biryani - it's the one dish that Indians ordered and picked up the most through the app last year.

Contrary to popular belief, Indians are not ordering as many lunches at the office as you might believe. On an average, Zomato users have ordered a piping hot meal five times more from their homes than their offices, the company revealed.

While this might be a complete surprise considering the number of times we hit ‘order’ on the food delivery app during work hours, the preferred choice of payment for most users wasn’t out-of-the-blue. Most people availing Zomato’s service went for the cashless mode with only 28 percent of users still opting COD for payment.

All these interesting tidbits, indicative of India’s ordering habits and the general trend in the past year, were revealed on Friday in the form of an infographic dubbed ‘eat-o-meter’ by foodtech unicorn Zomato. The information and the infographic were based on analysis of user data collected by Zomato for 118 cities in India in 2018.

“While a user in Jaipur placed the biggest order worth ₹1,84,760, which was delivered in 415 boxes, another user in Delhi placed most number of orders (1,804) over the year.”

Among the other eye-catching observations about the food ordering trend, it was interesting to note that Ahmedabad topped the charts (among Tier II and III cities) when it comes to placing the most number of orders. As for the Tier I category, unsurprisingly, Delhi/NCR took the cake. Folks over at Visakhapatnam – one of the latest cities where Zomato expanded its footprint – showcased that they are ready to embrace the online ordering trend while users based in Indore secured the top spot for midnight ordering; even above Mumbai!

With an unmissable presence across 118 cities and an ever-expanding line of services, in 2018, Zomato made its presence felt in the foodtech sphere and how. In July, the company launched its Piggyback loyalty programme, enabling users to save over ₹176 million on their orders. The programme, as has been revealed latest by the company, helped raise funds equivalent to 22 lacs meals for the Akshaya Patra Foundation.

The foodtech company also witnessed a huge traction for their SneakPeek section – a feature that allows customers to view restaurants via videos – boasting almost 59,471,997 seconds-worth view-time (close to two years). As Zomato Gold continued to be the hero of their success story with 700,000 active members.

Simply put, it has been a year of great feats for the foodtech startup with urban users and mostly those in the Tier II and III cities gladly welcoming the online food ordering trend. Even as this sphere evolves and grows, one thing is certain, the love for chicken biryani will remain unfazed.

Yes, chicken biryani was the most ordered food item as well as the most picked up (with Zomato Pickup service) this past year.