As consumers increasingly lean towards nutritious food options, the share of healthy dishes ordered on food delivery platform Zomato has grown to 7.5 per cent in 2026 compared to 2024 when it was 5.3 per cent, said Sahibjeet Singh Sawhney, the company’s marketing head.

 

The pace of adoption of healthy food items is higher among the younger cohort.

 

Among users below 25, the share of healthy dishes ordered increased from 3.9 per cent to 6.4 per cent, representing 62 per cent relative growth. For customers aged above 25, the share rose from 5.7 per cent to 8.4 per cent, a 47 per cent relative rise.

  

Speaking with Business Standard, Sawhney said, “The bigger shift is what is happening in the ecosystem altogether. People are becoming far more conscious about what goes into their food, from protein and sugar content to ingredients and nutritional value. As awareness grows, we are seeing customers increasingly seek healthier options, and our role is to respond to that demand and make those choices easier to discover.”

 

Currently, Zomato also has a separate tab or feature called ‘Healthy Mode,’ which curates restaurants and dishes offering healthy food options. The feature, launched in September last year, is available across seven cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Hyderabad. Among these markets, Bengaluru leads in the share of healthy orders and the pace of growth in healthy ordering.

 

According to Sawhney, customers who discover Healthy Mode show strong repeat behaviour, with six in 10 customers returning to order within a month.

 

In all, in the last one year, Zomato has delivered nearly 11 million orders through the Healthy Mode feature. This does not capture the healthy dishes ordered on the platform, since customers also search directly for dishes such as salads and place their orders. 

 

In addition to demand, the supply side is also expanding rapidly. Healthy restaurants recorded 18.7 per cent order growth in this year’s June quarter (April-June 2026) compared to the December quarter last year (October-December 2025).

 

The number of restaurants offering healthy food items has also grown 32 per cent (July 2025 to June 2026), compared with around 3.5 per cent growth in Zomato’s overall restaurant base.

 

Sawhney added that the feature is being adopted strongly by its existing users compared to new users. On the expansion target, he added that customer demand and restaurant supply will determine future plans.

 

Going ahead, the company does not see healthy ordering as necessarily replacing traditional food categories such as biryani, pizza or others. Instead, it views healthy food as an additional use case.