Mr. Shridhar Venkat serves as the CEO of The Akshaya Patra Foundation. He has over 30 years of experience with leading multinationals like Philips, ABB and Webex Communications India (CISCO). An Eisenhower Fellow 2014 for innovation, Shridhar has been working with Akshaya Patra for the past 16 years.

Mr. Shridhar Venkat answered the following questions during the Impact Talk:

1. At present, The Akshaya Patra Foundation caters to 19,039 schools across India. What is the criteria of selecting schools and nonprofits for providing the feeding support? Is the demographic data of families of beneficiary children taken into consideration to reach out to the most needy in the society? If yes, how do you incorporate inclusivity and diversity in your reach in the communities?
2. The mission statement of the Akshaya Patra Foundation reads, ‘No Child in India shall be deprived of Education because of Hunger’. Education is the most powerful tool in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty. Based on Akshaya Patra Foundation’s work with children and your experience, please tell us why addressing hunger should be our core agenda and how can the same contribute to socio-economic development of India?
3. Looking at the vast scale of the Mid-Day Meal Program, how do you measure your impact? Please share with us the key indicators and methods adopted for the impact measurement.
4. COVID19 has severely impacted the food security and livelihood of many in India. Under the relief work carried out by The Akshaya Patra Foundation to distribute cooked meals and relief kits, what was the criteria for shortlisting beneficiaries? Was this in any way linked to the Public Distribution System? How did you ensure there was no duplication of the relief efforts carried out by different institutions?
5. Akshaya Patra Foundation conducted incentivized drives to address vaccine hesitancy among marginalized populations. Tell us a little bit about the program? Based on your experience from the program, what are the major challenges in vaccinating India against COVID19? How did you overcome these challenges? What are some of the best practices that you would like to share with us?
6. COVID19 led to the closure of schools in India for a very long time. Majority of the children who receive the mid day meals in India come from marginalized families. For many of them, at times the mid day meal is the only wholesome meal in a day. How did you cope with this challenge and what approach did you adopt towards ensuring continued access to meals for these children?
7. The Akshaya Patra Foundation has recently collaborated with Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore to set up a first-of-its-kind research lab to conduct studies in the field of food security for children. What are the key areas of study that will be undertaken and the key outcomes expected out of this research? How will the research contribute to the discourse and efforts taken to eliminate hunger and malnutrition in children?
8. Given the increased focus on ‘Nutrition for All’ and emerging innovations in the space, What is the way forward plan of The Akshaya Patra Foundation?