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Feeding India, founded in 2014 by Ankit Kawatra and Srishti Jain, is one of the largest not-for-profits working towards solving the problem of hunger and food wastage in the country. We work towards getting surplus meals from individuals, communities, weddings, restaurants and corporate cafeterias, as well as prepare freshly cooked meals to serve the underserved. Through our five key programs, with the help of our volunteers, we redistribute nutritious meals to those who don’t have adequate or regular access to it.
Our beneficiaries include and are not limited to - children, women, the elderly, specially-abled and migrant labourers. We have a network of 22,500+ volunteers present across 95 cities in India, and have served 31 million meals to people in need.
In January 2019, Zomato and Feeding India's association gave birth to The Feeding Foundation - moving from a primarily philanthropic relationship to a deeply collaborative alliance. Through this alliance we have gained more world-class leadership and expertise - particularly in technology, research, building an empowered organisation, & also across our other program creation and solutioning areas. We have also reimagined our visual brand, logo, and website to better capture who we are.
While Feeding India continues to remain a non profit - managing our own finances, data, infrastructure and strategy; Zomato’s expertise in consumer technology and deep understanding of the food ecosystem will play a key part in their our goal of designing interventions to eliminate hunger and food wastage globally.
This year - the number of meals we serve per month has increased from 78,300 meals in January to over 1.6 million (16 lakh) meals a month in September 2019. Our core operations are managed by a team of 14 members based out of our office in Gurgaon.
Why did we start this initiative?
India is the 2nd largest producer of food in the world, yet what we don’t realise is that food worth $14 Billion is lost and wasted every year. As per the FAO, India has over 195 Million malnourished people - we believe these numbers are underreported and the actual numbers will be much higher.
We have an internal migrant population of 139 million people that moves from state to city and within cities - that is underserved and has a lack of government aid and subsidies, leading to downward spirals in the cycle of poverty.
This points us to the fact that the demand of food among people with limited or no food security and the excess supply of food don't sit close to each other. There is also the absence of reliable data on demand and supply, the lack of a conducive food donation policy. Feeding India was started as an initiative to bridge this gap between demand and supply of food as a solution to the problem of hunger and food waste in India.
Our Programs: (We have formulated 5 key programs we would focus on as part of this initiative.)
Magic Wheels: 24/7 running vehicles that collect & redistribute large quantities of excess nutritious food from - corporate, factory & college cafeterias; hotels & restaurants and large events, etc. They follow a Standard Operating Process to maintain food safety regulations before collecting the food, and also at the time of serving meals to the beneficiaries. Our processes and trainings are compliant with specifications from the FSSAI. We currently have ~170 food supply partners for this program, and have delivered over 1.1 million (11 lakh) meals through this channel to those in need, in September.
Happy Fridge: We set up free Fridges in residential and commercial complexes to facilitate communities in providing immediate, anonymous and dignified access to food, to those in desperate need. So far, we have installed 43 Happy Fridges across India and each fridge serves between 1500 - 2000 meals a month. In the month of September we were able to serve 63.2K meals to those in need through this program. We will be deploying 500+ community fridges across the country in this quarter.
Hunger Heroes: Our volunteers are empowered citizens driving change on the ground, within their communities. We have over 22.5K volunteers across 95 cities in India of which 5.1K were active in the last week of September. The demographics of our volunteers spreads across college students, working professionals as well as those retired from service. The program enables citizens to make a social change at an individual level while encouraging others to not only address but take affirmative action toward the cause. Our volunteers, a.k.a. Hunger Heroes also help us implement our various programs, and food collection and distribution drives in their city. Last month our volunteers served over 319000 meals to those in need within their communities.
Poshan to Paathshala: While this is our smallest program, we institutionalised this to push for reliable and early access to nutrition for children - by serving meals as an incentive for education. Through this program we have served over 12600 meals in the month of September.
Emergency Relief Services: Natural disasters impact over 500 M people in India every year.. In the current decade, damages caused by natural disasters are expected to touch $53.6 billion. This year the team has already spent ~INR 92,00,000 and has mobilised over 3.3 lakh meals plus other relief materials, supporting 9000+ families across Odisha, Assam, Bihar, Punjab and Maharashtra.
Awards and recognition
Oct, 2016 – UN SDG Leader - Ankit Kawatra, Founder - Feeding India, appointed as one of the United Nations’ 17 Young Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals from the world.
June, 2017 – Queen’s Award - Ankit Kawatra and Feeding India awarded by the Queen of England. Feeding India also received a grant from The Queen’s Commonwealth trust presided by Prince Harry.
April, 2017 - Forbes 30 under 30 - Ankit Kawatra, Founder - Feeding India, honoured as the Forbes 30 under 30 Entrepreneurs.
Oct, 2017 - Karamveer Chakra - Ankit Kawatra, Founder - Feeding India, received the Karamveer Chakra for his selfless service to his country.
Dec, 2017 - Startup Of the Year 2016 - Feeding India won the Startup of The Year Award while Ankit Kawatra, Founder - Feeding India, won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Jan, 2018 – Indian National Youth Award - Feeding India gets recognised by Prime Minister Modi on National Youth Day.
