Thousands of migrant workers and daily wage labourers have been suffering during the lockdown. Nandan Konety and Deep Desai felt that there is nothing more serious than this. That's why the duo recently started an initiative called Project Khichdi under which they feed poor people in and around Bengaluru khichdi and pickle.
Explaining how the initiative came about, Deep says, "A few days ago, I was having dinner at Nandan's home and his dad suggested that we try and feed poor people. On April 7, we initiated this project and created our page on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We posted about our initiative and asked people to contribute towards it. This way, we were able to raise funds of Rs 1,65,000 which is been spent on buying khichdi and for transportation to deliver it to the people."
So where do they get this simple and nutritious Khichdi from? Nandan's mother is a CEO of a start-up called GrowFit and they purchase the food from here. Nandan explains, "Each plate costs Rs 31 and with packaging, the cost comes up to Rs 41. However, we are trying to negotiate the price down to Rs 34 per plate. The food is cooked in a clean environment and served to the needy. Initially, we started only with 50 packets and then increased it to 100. In future we plan to pack 300 packets per day. We have served more than 500 people and aim to serve many people in the coming days."
When we asked them about the reason behind cooking khichdi every day, Nandan says, "It is very easy to cook this particular food and it is also nutritious. Since our project is mainly dependent on the funds that we raise, it is essential for us to calculate the expenditure and spend the money carefully."
The duo who are from Vidyashilp Academy has tied up with an NGO called Saving Souls who take their food parcels to distribute it among the poor. Deep says, "Some times, we Dunzo it to the places where it is urgently required. In such cases, we use money from the funds to pay it to the delivery person. We are sure that this situation of hunger will take some time to recover even after the lockdown is lifted. Hence, we will continue to serve people even after the lockdown."
