Nearly 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted globally each year according to the United Nations. This wastage is a whopping one-third of the total amount of food produced. The UN notes that this amount of food could feed more than four times the number of people who go hungry every year.

While these numbers are constantly on the rise, Chocko Valliappa, the managing trustee of Valliappa Foundation and the Sona Valliappa Group, decided to do his part to address the issue.

Valliappa, a serial technology and social entrepreneur, and Vice Chairperson of Sona College of Technology, has come up with an innovative and modern approach.

Anadhanam is a digital platform that would connect NGOs and government agencies globally with commercial and retail food waste sources – all stakeholders in the surplus food recycling movement. The platform has been readied by the Valliappa Foundation with an aim to provide a robust technology backbone that would amplify the efforts of both the private NGOs and institutions, as well as government agencies.

Anadhanam will not only identify hunger hotspots and Below Poverty Line (BPL) zones but will also help government agencies quantify efforts geographically. The platform will boost NGO efforts by supporting them and connecting them effectively to each other and to other agencies.

In India alone, there are more than 25 national NGOs and numerous other regional agencies working in the food recovery and redistribution area. If their connection to each other would be well established, the collective efforts would be much more effective and seamless across all areas.

“One of the main lessons the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us is to care for the community,” said Chocko Valliappa, sharing his thoughts behind the creation of such a platform. “Anadhanam has a central ‘hunger hotspots’ and BPL map, and provides a central database of national volunteers through web and mobile applications to NGOs,” he shared.

“Not only this, the platform is also capable of effectively creating cause-driven campaigns and events to spread awareness and raise funding. Through Anadhanam, we can also facilitate implementing food nutrition and security policy efforts for both international and national government agencies,” added Valliappa.

NGOs in this space would find the digital platform useful for conducting their operations (identification of spots, collection, logistics, volunteering) seamlessly in one place, connecting their employees and stakeholders.

On the other hand, the application will also let food donors alert NGOs in the event of excess availability of food.

“Our vision was to help accelerate global efforts in feeding the hungry through food waste recovery and redistribution. We recognised that this can be done by creating a national network and providing NGOs with a robust digital platform to connect, collaborate and co-ordinate without hassles. Following these national efforts, we aim to connect and coordinate international efforts,” shared Valliappa.

For more details log in to: http://www.anadhanam.org