Akshaya Patra Foundation ties up with Cisco to digitise 7

City-based not-for-profit organisation Akshaya Patra Foundation that feeds 1.49million people every day nationwide has embarked onanother ambitious project of digitising seven of 33kitchens in association with Cisco.
Two kitchens in Bengaluru and one each in Lucknow, Vrindavan, Ballari, Guwahati and Jigani near Bengaluru will beconnected to Bengaluru and Gurugram digitally.
Announcing the agreement between Akshaya Patra Foundation and Cisco, the company senior vice president (IT) and Chief Information Officer V C Gopalratnam said the initiative would put in place a strong foundation for robust networking platform to provide real time data analysis to the headquarter headquarters.
Shridhar Venkat, Chief Executive Officer of APF,told reporters that the Foundation has 33 kitchens in 12 states.

By the end of this year, the digitisation would startand based on the success, other kitchens would be digitised.
"Currently our data analysis happens through ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). Rest of all happens on paper and pencil. So digitisation is really going to help us in analysing and optimising it," said Venkat.

He said 750 vehicles supply meals every day to 1.49 million people.
Each kitchen of 1,00,000 capacity handles about 10 tonnes of grains, five tonnes of pulses andfive tones of vegetables.
Each kitchen has about 250 to 300people.
Last year Cisco had provided 750 volunteers, he said.
Speaking about APF's objectives and future plans, Venkat said the APF intends to increase its production three-fold in view of huge malnourished population in India.

"Our focus has been to ensure that no child in India is deprived of education because of hunger."
"We are 1.6 million(people everyday). We want to reach five million by 2020. Weare looking for trusted partners like Cisco to help us achieve our goal," said Venkat.