Bhujia with a side of gold coins? Flipkart Minutes reveals India’s wildest orders

Last August, Flipkart Minutes entered India’s quick commerce space, joining Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit, and Zepto. Already a recognised name in e-commerce, Flipkart quickly expanded its q-comm arm to over 19 cities and 2,900 pin codes.

To mark its first anniversary, the platform has issued its annual report titled ‘Minutes That Move India’, decoding what, when, and why Indians buy in the moment.

India’s favourite orders

Food, naturally, topped the list, but there was nothing predictable about which particular food item outsold all else, crossing one million orders a year — onions.

Also, Indians ended up ordering “enough milk to fill six Olympic-sized pools”, while bananas sold in volumes “enough to power an army of minions”. 

A whopping 12 million scoops of ice cream were ordered by consumers using Flipkart Minutes. Speaking of comfort food, Indians also ordered four packets of Maggi every minute. 

Personal care items also grew in popularity, with face washes, soaps, lotions, anti-tan, and after-sun products seeing a 1.6X uptick.

Portable tech accessories, chargers and earphones have seen consistent demand post-launch.

Order oddities in India

There were 365 days in the last year, but one consumer placed 886 orders during that time, averaging 2.42 orders every single day throughout the year.

Another consumer placed the highest single-value order, amounting to Rs 1.85 lakh. However, the report does not specify what extravagant items were included in this order, leaving much to the imagination.

Another record-breaking statistic, but this time to Flipkart’s credit, was the fastest-ever delivery made in just three minutes and 21 seconds in Bengaluru’s Hosur Sarjapura Road Layout.

The quirkiest cart of the year featured an order that included aloo bhujia, a mouth freshener, and two gold coins.

And, for one headline anecdote, a man queuing five hours outside Mumbai’s Apple Store for an iPhone 16 opted instead for Flipkart Minutes and got it delivered in 10 minutes before the line had even moved.

Behavioural shifts throughout the day

• 7-8 AM: peak orders for morning essentials.
• Evenings: a surge for desserts and snacks.
• Younger consumers in Pune, Patna and Bengaluru emerged as the most active users in India.

Late-night shopping carts had their own stories: a 2:58 AM ice cream order in Delhi and repeat demand for “breakup survival kits” (ice cream, chips and tissues), placed over 100 times. Tech accessories such as chargers, power banks, and cables also dominated nocturnal carts.

City-specific insights

• Lucknow and Jaipur recorded India’s fastest average delivery times.
• Kolkata topped dessert demand, led by chocolates, cookies and ice creams.
• Guwahati showed spikes in beauty and personal care purchases.
• Mumbai led the pet food demand.
• Bengaluru emerged as the “Gadget Central”, with late-night orders of wearables and audio gear.

Festive order trends 

• Valentine’s Day chocolate orders rose 4X.
• Diwali saw more orders for diyas, fairy lights and rangoli.
• New Year’s Eve leaned heavily on chips and namkeen.
• Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, etc. drove 60X growth in greeting cards, 28X in wall photo frames, and 7.5X in wallet-and-belt combos.

Seasonal cravings 

Flipkart Minutes lists over 1,000 monsoon-specific products such as umbrellas, raincoats, mop sets, insect killers, power banks, and torches. One in five orders in June carried a rain-related item, selling 90% of the monsoon inventory in the same month. 

Summers flipped the cart composition to coolers: curd/yoghurt, aerated drinks, ice creams, buttermilk, and fruit drinks peaked between 1 and 3 PM, led by demand from Bengaluru, Delhi, and Mumbai. No surprises here.

India’s order history with Flipkart Minutes has been an interesting one. Increasing purchasing power and smartphone penetration into the deepest parts of India have made consumers out of the most unlikely demographics too.

India's quick commerce market, which launched in 2020, has reached a remarkable valuation of Rs 64,000 crore, with an impressive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 142% from FY22 to FY25.