Zomato acquires non-profit Feeding India, aims to end hunger and food wastage in India and globally
As part of the acquisition, Feeding India will continue to be a non-profit and Zomato will fund the entire salaries of the team as well as assist with some core initiatives.
Gurugram-based foodtech unicorn, Zomato India has announced the acquisition of not-for-profit organisation, Feeding India, as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility to deal with issues of hunger and food wastage.
As part of the acquisition, Feeding India will continue to be a non-profit and Zomato will fund the entire salaries of the team – and some core initiatives.
One of these initiatives is the development of the ‘Feedi.ng’ app, which aspires to connect donors and volunteers at scale with the platform expecting to serve at least 100 million underprivileged people every month.
Zomato will also be helping in the revamping of the Feeding India website, and in the spirit of transparency will be publishing quarterly financials on the website.
Founded by Ankit Kawatra and Srishti Jain in 2014, Feeding India is NGO working to solve the complex challenges of food wastage, hunger, and malnutrition in India.
Speaking on the acquisition, Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO, Zomato, said,
“Food wastage in India happens at multiple levels – harvesting, transporting, processing, packaging and consuming. Someone has to do something significant to address this core issue of our country. And we think we can contribute to easing the pain.”
“We have now begun a new, and a more concrete chapter around serving the underserved by acquiring Feeding India. It is an important step for us, as both organizations share a common dream of ending hunger and food wastage — not just in India, but globally,” he added.
Zomato India first announced that it has been partnering with Feeding India in February, this year. Through its blog, the company also informed that it would be powering Feeding India’s already existing sustainable models to solve the biggest challenge our country currently faces — sustainably feeding its 20 million hungry population.
Feeding India not only donates excess food from various venues including events, airports, weddings, restaurants, corporates, etc. that would otherwise go to landfills but also cooks fresh food through innovative kitchen-models to support people, especially women and children, with limited access to food and nutrition.
[L-R] Ankit Kawatra, Srishti Jain and Deepinder Goyal
From a team of two people four years ago, in February, Feeding India had said that it had grown to over 8,500 volunteers, and was working in more than 65 cities, through 12 food recovery vans, and more than 50 community fridges.
However, after collaborating with Zomato, Feeding India’s growth grew, as it moved to distributing over 1.1 million meals a month from 78,300 monthly meals in December 2018.
Similarly, the number of cities Feeding India is active in has risen from 65 to 82. The number of Hunger Heroes (volunteers at Feeding India) has grown from 8,500 to 21,500.
(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)
