New Delhi: Food delivery platform Swiggy on Thursday said it has partnered with various commercial kitchens, NGOs and state governments to provide daily meals to thousands of underprivileged, daily wagers and stranded migrant labourers during the 21-day lockdown period.
Having served over 2,50,000 meals so far, Swiggy said it is in the process of crowdsourcing funds from corporates and individuals in order to scale the initiative to other parts of the country.
The goal is to serve 5,00,000 meals daily, said the food delivery platform.
Swiggy launched the ‘Hope, Not Hunger’ initiative launched last week to support the Delhi government’s programme to feed the needy.
It helped organise the preparation and distribution of nutritious meals twice a day across relief camps in Delhi with the support of partners such as Compass Kitchens, Lite Bite Foods and SmartQ.
The relief effort was quickly scaled to Mumbai with the help of NGOs Pratham, HelpAge India and Yuva, and Elior India acting as the food supply partner.
Since then, Swiggy has taken this initiative to Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Gurugram, Chennai and Kolkata, supplying over 75,000 meals daily.
Each meal served for lunch and dinner includes adequate portions of rice, dal and vegetables to ensure the nutritional needs of the individual are met.
“Considering the nature of our business, we are in a unique place to contribute by making something as essential as food available to the needy while providing business opportunities for our restaurant and kitchen partners, so that we can together make it through to the other end of this crisis,” Sriharsha Majety, CEO, Swiggy, said in a statement.
Thousands of Swiggy customers have already contributed to the aHope, Not Hunger’ initiative through the Swiggy app.A
Swiggy has also set up a platform on Milaap for individual donations.