The world is facing an unprecedented challenge with communities and economies everywhere affected by the growing COVID-19 pandemic. On 11 March 2020, WHO declared Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) outbreak as a pandemic and reiterated the call for countries to take immediate actions. World Health Organization (WHO)has announced 976,249 confirmed cases across 207 countries, according to India’s Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) sources, a total of2547 COVID-19 cases, have been reported in 29 states/union territories as of 9th April.
According to the World Food Program (WFP), over 800 million people face chronic undernourishment and over 100 million people are in need of life-saving food assistance. The pandemic has thrown the livelihoods of lakhs into a chaotic twister. The most impacted are the crores of people who are daily wage earners, the underprivileged and those homeless children not knowing where and when their next meal will be. They have all had their only source of income snuffed out by the lockdown. As India, along with the rest of the world grapples with the pandemic, the country is also witnessing the inspiring work of many changemakers who are putting their own lives at stake to help millions stay afloat.
In light of this, K Ganesh, Serial Entrepreneur and Promoter – BigBasket, Bluestone, Portea Medical, HomeLane, Freshmenu, HungerBox, Verloop.io, along with a group of like-minded professionals, entrepreneurs including Vijay Skekhar Sharma, Founder, Paytm, Venkat Narayana, CEO, Prestige Group, and Juggy Marwaha of JLL and social servants of the KVN Foundation have come together to give back to the people and conceptualized FeedMy Bangalore (FMB) with one simple mission – Ensure people don’t go hungry. Others associated with the company include the Oota Company and B2B food technology company Hungerbox that runs cloud kitchen across major metros.
The goal of the foundation is to ensure the underprivileged people of the city of Bangalore and also to the unnamed stars who are out there in these difficult times working tirelessly to keep everybody safe do not go hungry. Starting small with 500 meals in Bangalore, they have now served over 4.6 lakh meals, started operations in Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, and Noida. Currently, they are serving around 85,000 meals a day, which is likely to increase to 100,000 meals being served daily. They are targeting to serve over 30 lakh meals totally.