- Punjabi cuisines is now India’s national cuisine
- Idly and Dosa are the most popular breakfast foods across India
India, Chennai, March 3, 2015: Sulekha.com, India’s leading platform for ‘local service need fulfilment, today shared the results of a study undertaken on online search trends for “Catering Services” in India. Catering Services is emerging as an important local service category in online search in India.
This study is an analysis of over 27 lakh searches from key cities across 20,000 catering services listed and over 5 lakh service requests made on Sulekha.com, in the last two years. The cities include New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad.
Key interesting findings of the study:
There is always a constant demand for catering services and it has grown immensely in 2014. The study saw 200% increase in online search for catering services in 2014, as compared to the previous year.
- Mumbai (207%) leads the increase in demand for catering services in 2014 as compared to Chennai (202%), Delhi/NCR (195%), Bangalore (195%), Hyderabad (180%), Kolkata (178%), Pune (172%) and Ahmedabad (165%)
- Number of caterers listed online has increased by 32% in the last two years
- 93% of catering service requests includes Punjabi dishes in the menu. The biggest change is in the South where the choice of Punjabi dishes went up from 53% in 2013 to 87% in 2014. Chicken tikka, chicken butter masala, dal makhni, baingan bartha, aloo dum, and biriyani are the most popular menus requested. Other popular cuisines include Hyderabadi, Rajasthani and Maharastrian
- South Indian dishes, Idly and Dosa have caught people’s attention up North. 73% of weddings and other functions have this in their breakfast menu. This is followed by Poori aloo, parathas and chole bhatures
- 61% of catering service requests are for vegetarian dishes whereas 39% of requests include at least one non-vegetarian dish in the menu
Interesting new trends:
- There has been a 500% increase in requests for healthy dishes such as 100% whole wheat rotis, brown rice and low fat and salt dishes
- Live counters at weddings and events have become very popular. Dosa, Appam, Pasta counters are in demand and allows people to choose the ingredients they would prefer in their food
- Similarly, there is an immense increase in demand for Indian chaat and sweet counters which include many varieties. Low calories diet food counters are also gaining popularity
- Popular international cuisines in India are Chinese and Italian
- Packed tiffin/lunch/dinner catering has been a lucrative business because of the increase in working professionals. Over 5 lakh working adults across Pan India looked for home-made and hygienic tiffin services in the year 2014
Satya Prabhakar, CEO, Sulekha.com, said, “Catering services is one of the fastest growing businesses and there is an explosion in demand for it all across India. We are also noticing an increasing homogenization of cuisines across the country as Punjabi cuisine was the de facto menu in the past two years. There has also been an immense demand for South Indian breakfast across India.”
Sulekha.com is one of India’s largest and fastest-growing digital platforms for local service need fulfillment in over 40 cities, connecting tens of millions of users and local businesses in 200+ need categories such as computer training, serviced apartments, wooden flooring, party catering, baby-sitting, elder care, yoga lessons, kitchen renovation, wedding photography, moving-packing, pest control, event planning and auto repair. Sulekha has 14 offices and 1,300+ employees across India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Austin.
