Cisco to digitize world’s largest non-profit mid-day meal programme

NEW DELHI: As part of its global efforts to support nonprofit organizations around the world that help meet critical human needs, Cisco today announced an agreement with Akshaya Patra Foundation which will be accelerating digitization of their kitchens across 7 locations in India.

Akshaya Patra Foundation is the world’s largest (non-profit) mid-day meal programme serving wholesome food to over 1.66 million children from 13,958 schools across 12 states in India.

Digitization of Akshaya Patra kitchens and key offices will help them realize significant gains in productivity, scalability, and cost-efficiency and accelerate Akshaya Patra’s goal to reach 5 Million children by 2020.

As part of this agreement, Cisco will deploy an enterprise-grade network and collaboration suite connecting their kitchens and their offices by enabling end to end IT & process digitization.

The upgraded Akshaya Patra network will connect their offices in Bangalore, Gurgaon, and field kitchens across 7 locations (2 kitchens in Bangalore, one each in Lucknow, Vrindavan, Bellary, Guwahati, and Jigani) on a single network which will enable them to efficiently track their kitchen production, distribution, supply chain and logistics.

Through digitization, Akshaya Patra will have faster and better connectivity in their field offices which is critical to the kitchen’s operational performance, and necessary to support virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing. In addition, Akshaya Patra can now analyze, and operationalize disparate sets of data in near real-time helping them to improve the overall speed, security and responsiveness of the programme. This digitization effort is expected to increase Akshaya Patra’s operational efficiency by about 5% in the initial phase, which will help them extend the mid-day meal program to over 28500 students everyday immediately.

Cisco has been associated with Akshaya Patra since 2007 through employee giving, volunteering and disaster relief assistance. In the aftermath of the 2015 Chennai floods, Cisco sponsored Akshaya Patra’s first kitchen-on-wheels. The kitchen-on-wheels can run around the clock, with un-interrupted power supply to provide 2000 meals every two hours when stationed at any site post a disaster. In the aftermath of the recent floods in Gorakhpur, this kitchen generated about 100,000 meals.

“Technology connects people in meaningful ways and has the power to create new opportunities and boost economic growth and well-being. Cisco is committed to supporting scalable and self-sustaining programs that use technology to address some of society's biggest challenges. For the past 20 years, we have applied our technology and expertise to accelerate global problem solving and positively affect people, society, and the planet," said Tae Yoo, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Cisco

“We are excited to work with Cisco to digitize our operations. Small improvements in operational efficiency can have a big impact when you distribute at scale. Currently most of the data collection and planning is manual; with a rapidly growing network of kitchens, the network platform we are putting in place today will help us in our digitization journey by enabling real-time data collection, streamline kitchen production, distribution and supply chain. All of this will help us in our mission to reach more children," said Shridhar Venkat, Chief Executive Officer, The Akshaya Patra Foundation

“In India, we focus on positively affecting and engaging with the communities in which we work, live, and play. Using the power of the network to digitally enable nonprofit organizations such as Akshaya Patra is a great example of how technology can help solve the world's most challenging problems. We are committed to focusing on solutions that can be scaled to benefit millions in underserved communities around the world," said  VC Gopalratnam, SVP-IT and CIO-International, Cisco