Indian Startups Using Leftover Food To Feed The Needy Ones

Weddings, canteens, hotels, social and family functions, households spew out so much food. A study by Food Ministry, Government of India found that more than one fourth of the food at social events such as weddings goes waste. This is a sad state of affairs when one considers that there are many street children who go to sleep hungry every day.

Indian Startups Using Leftover Food

These are some Indian Startups Using Leftover Food To Feed The Needy Ones.

Feeding India is a NGO run by youth, started by Ankit Kawatra, which works to end hunger & malnutrition. The initiative is headed by a core team of working professionals who come from different backgrounds like consulting, marketing, e-commerce, etc. Starting with a team of 5 in August 2014, they now have a network of more than 2,200 volunteers in 32+ cities. Feeding India has served 1,300,000+ meals till date. Their belief is that there is no need to create new food to feed the less privileged, but to simply direct the extra food which is already created.

Image Source : Feedingindia.org

Ankit said, “If we’re collecting food from an event and next door is an NGO for autistic kids that we’ve tied up with, we go and donate the meal to these kids.” In October 2015, Overwhelmed with the support and love people have expressed for sharing food, Feeding India planned a surprise for the country by creating a mobile application that makes food donation as easy as it sounds. Using the app, people can now connect with nearby hunger heroes and donate their leftover food. The ‘Feeding India’ app is available on the android play store currently.

Check Out these startups aiming to reduce food wastage

GiveAway foundeed by, Asif, Nareshwar Sivanesan and Fahd Khaleel Wallajah, were always concerned about the problem of hunger in the country and as an effort to address the interlinked problems of hunger and food wastage.It all started in September, 2015.

Image Source : Giveawayindia.org

GiveAway started its journey by collecting extra and leftover food from households, wedding receptions, restaurants and parties from all over Chennai & personally went to these places to collect the food and to ensure that it was packed in a safe and hygienic manner before it was delivered to the beneficiaries. Soon they started taking requests on Whatsapp.

Asif says,

No Food Waste is a social startup, began in Coimbatore, which is working to address urban hunger. It has a mobile app of the same name that allows it to crowd source data on hunger spots in India and take requests for donation of excess food.

The app has identified 80 such spots in Delhi and the national capital region. “Anyone can pinpoint a place as a hunger spot on our app, and our team verifies it and updates our database. Individuals can directly donate food or request us, through the app, to collect and distribute it, which we do through our volunteers,” says No Food Waste’s founder Padmanaban Gopalan.

Image Source : Nofoodwaste.in

For now, the initiative is entirely crowd funded and is looking to tie up with individuals and organizations alike to scale up the operations significantly. Soon the startup will be working with Greater Chennai Corporation to accomplish their objectives. Parallelly, the project will also set up 2 fridges at restaurants/bakeries in its initial run to enable a ‘public take away’ system for the homeless.

Finally, If you are hosting a function in the cities listed in Resources above, do not hesitate to get in touch with the volunteer organizations in advance so that the latter have sufficient time to organize collection.

Happy Donating !!