127 - Behind The World's Largest Mid-Day Meal Program | In Conversation With Mr. Shridhar Venkat | Bharatvaarta

In this edition of our #LongIndia Series, we are privileged to speak with Mr. Shridhar Venkat, CEO of the Akshaya Patra Foundation; facilitators of the world's largest mid-day meal program, serving wholesome food to over 1.8 million children from 19,000+ schools all over India. 

Mr. Venkat has been with the foundation for 16 years now and has also held leadership positions across prominent multinational like Philips and Cisco. His search for an existential purpose in life made him quit his corporate career and join Akshaya Patra Foundation. In this episode, we discussed his personal journey and the work of the foundation over the last couple of decades. 

In this riveting conversation, we started off by exploring the origin of Akshaya Patra and delved into it's sustainability. We then progressed to how Akshaya Patra solves for last-mile connectivity - a historically difficult problem in India. Along the way, we also explored the challenges that the foundation overcomes when delivering hot and fresh meals to children. 

Mr. Venkat also shed light on his experience working in corporates and how it translated to improving processes at Akshaya Patra. We also got a deeper look into the technology innovations made by the foundation to operate effectively at such a large scale. We ended the discussion by speaking about the various undertakings of Mr. Venkat and the Foundation to further the education of underprivileged children.