Chennai
Hospitality is intrinsic to Indian culture. Having people over usually involves the preparation of plenty of food. This inevitably means leftovers – some can be packed and given to grateful bachelors and hostilities – but usually, there is massive wastage. This impelled three caring Chennai citizens — Mohamed Asif, Fahd Khaleel and Nareshwar Sivanesan — to create a platform whereby this food could reach the needy.
“Fahd and I have always been socially involved: we have been helping out at orphanages and giving food to street-dwellers in our area,” says Mohamed, a former software professional. “But over time, we realised that it wasn’t the availability of food that was the problem — because there’s so much food that goes waste every day in every household. People wanted to give it away, but did not know how. So, Fahd, a former colleague, Nareshwar, and I formed ‘Give Away’.” This is a group of volunteers that also created a WhatsApp group in September 2015. “All one has to do is send the group a WhatsApp message: the team will collect the food from the donor’s doorstep and pack it hygienically. We’ve been giving a meal to 1,000 people a day,” says Mohamed.
However, it was during the Chennai floods in December that they realised what they were addressing. “When the floods lashed the city, we contacted 10 corporates, including Pepsi, Big Basket and McDonalds, all of whom got back to us. McDonalds gave us Rs 10 lakh worth of coupons, which we distributed to kids and volunteers involved in flood relief. But the most special contribution was through Foodpanda — we’d organised funds through crowdfunding from users of the website. Bawarchi and Paradise Biryani made 6 tonnes of biryani for over 20,000 people. But they said the onus of shipping it from Hyderabad to Chennai was on us. Later, we approached Indigo who, to our surprise, agreed to fly the biriyani to Bengaluru from where we had Parveen Travels bring it to Chennai. That’s when we realised the potential of our initiative,” says Mohamed, who has active volunteers in Bengaluru and Chennai.
Another issue they had faced was, “A lot of people asked us, ‘You’ve given us a meal today, what about tomorrow?’ We’ve also been getting calls from Kashmir, Ladakh and even from Saudi Arabia, asking us to pick up leftover food. That’s when we realised that we were tackling a global issue and wanted to find a long-term solution. So, over the past six months, we’ve been doing a great deal of research that has now culminated in a platform (a website and an app), that will link the donor to the beneficiary,” Mohamed says.
Their experience during the floods gave them the much needed impetus to implement the idea. “For example, if a donor wants to contribute rations, he or she can pick a home or orphanage in their vicinity or elsewhere, and state how much they want to contribute. And when we say ‘contribution’, it’s not cash, but everything from food to other basic needs,” he explains.
Give Away has partnered with Big Basket for groceries, Snapdeal for non-perishable items and Foodpanda for food. “This way, it’s a fool-proof system wherein the donor will be able to track his contribution,” says Mohamed. The website and app will be available from the first week of September.
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