A PROJECT REPORT ON

“AKSHAYA PATRA”
Unlimited food for education

DEPARTMENT OF MBA AND RESEARCH CENTER

RNS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Uttarahalli – Kengeri Road, Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Post

Channasandra, Bangaluru, Karanataka (560098)

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I have taken efforts in this project. However, it would have been possible without the kind support and help
of my guide Prof. Rakesh Nagaraj. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to him.

I have expressed my deep gratitude to our beloved Director Dr. H. N. SHIVASHANKAR, our respected
principal Dr. M. K. VENKATESHA, and our HOD Dr. U BOJANNA, RNS Institute of Technology for
giving an opportunity to do this project.

I would like to thank Mr. Sunil for support and guidance with in the organisation.

I would like to express my gratitude towords my institute – RNS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ,

parents, friends, for their co-operation and encouragement which helped me in completion of this project.

Finally I would like to offer my grateful thanks to other sources of contribution that might be advertently left
out.

Thank you

Gayatri hegde
1st yr MBA
‘A’ section
Introduction
The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a non-profit organisation in India that runs school lunch
programme across India. The organisation was established in 2000. It feeds 18,02,517 children
every day across India. The food distributed by Akshaya Patra is perceived to be "hygienic,
nutritious and delicious".

It is a world’s largest NGO run Mid-Day Meal programming serving over 1.8 million children in
16,856 schools across 12 states & 2 union territories in India.

History

Looking out of a window, one day in Mayapur, a village near Calcutta, His Divine Grace A. C.
Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada saw a group of children fighting with stray dogs over of food. From this
simple, yet heart-breaking incident was born a determination that no child within a radius of ten miles from
our centre should go hungry.
His inspiring resolve sowed the seeds of The Akshaya Patra Foundation. With the vision: "No child in India
shall be deprived of education because of hunger," Akshaya Patra started the Mid-Day Meal Programme in
June 2000 by serving mid-day meals to 1,500 children across five government schools in Bengaluru,
Karnataka. A humble beginning, yet, the initial days of implementing the programme was not a smooth sail.
Soon came the helping hands of Mohandas Pai, who took the initiative of donating the first vehicle to
transport food to the schools; and Abhay Jain, who promised to bring in more donors to contribute for the
further expansion of the programme.

In partnership with the Government of India and various State Governments, as well as philanthropic
donors; the organisation is running the world’s largest Mid-Day Meal Programme. Built on a Public-Private
Partnership model, Akshaya Patra combines good management, innovative technology, and smart
engineering to deliver nutritious and hygienic school lunch on every school day.

Nature of business

It is a non-profit organisation in India. It is mainly involved in implementing the Mid-Day Meal

programme to the children in Government and Government-aided schools across India. It follows a
Public-Private Partnership model of operation, and hence working in partnership with the Central and
State Government.
Vision, Mission and Quality Policy

VISION: No children in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger.

MISSION: To feed 5 million children by 2025.

Quality and Food Safety are the primary ingredients at each of the Akshaya Patra kitchens. Learning from
the past, they introduced various metrics in every area of operations and service delivery. They are also
partnered guy. To maintain the quality of the meal, standardisation of recipes across all locations has been
undertaken. To improve quality standards, advance projects like Kaizen and 5S have been started in
different locations. Employee Health and Safety activities are conducted to further increase hygiene
standards and improve safety and health.

Akshaya Patra has opened its first Food Safety and Quality Control Lab in Ahmedabad. The lab has been
fitted with state-of-the-art equipment, and high-precision testing instruments.

Work flow Model

One of the biggest innovations by Akshaya Patra is the construction of gravity flow based
kitchens. Such a centralized kitchen is divided into 4 floors, each allocated to a different task. Seven to eight
tons of rice, six to seven tons of vegetables and two tons of pulses are cooked each day in just this one
kitchen. Each centralized kitchen is capable of cooking 1.8 million meals per day, with the largest situated at
Hubli-Dharwad and capable of cooking 185,000 meals daily. The organisation sources its food stocks from
local markets, thereby reducing costs associated with transportation and food spoilage, while supporting the
local economy. The Rice Master Silo has a capacity to store 270 tons of rice at one time.
Cooking starts at about 3am each day, and it takes about three hours to complete the entire sequence from
pre-processing to packing of the cooked food. Technology has been brought in wherever possible to cut
down costs, bring in speed and scale up operations. The furnace is being fed with briquettes, which are made
from bagasse, the fibrous by-product of the sugarcane industry which is being efficiently used here as bio-
fuel.

Gravity flow kitchen starts from fourth floor and ends in ground floor. How it works at different floors can
be seen with help table as below,

Floor sequence Work flow

Fourth Floor Altar room
Day silos
Training room
Store

Third Floor Store

Pre Processing Area
Cold room
Second Floor Board room
Viewers gallery
Admin block
Rest room
First Floor Chapathi preparation area
Cooking area
RO Plant
Manager cabin
Ground Floor Reception
Packing area
Main panel room
First aid room

In each floor activities are different and from top to bottom all the activities are done in a systematic way.
The top floor i.e.4th floor is reserved for storage facility and it also having training room. Storage facility
containing cold storage capacity of 5 tonnes and all the vegetables and milk are stored in less than 5 degree.

The 3rd floor is reserved for Pre-processing. This is where vegetables are chopped, rice and dal (dried
lentils) are washed, and all other preparations are done before the actual cooking begins. The vegetables are
cleaned in accordance to the three tank water system. First with plain water, then with 50 – 100ppm chlorine
water for 10 minutes, and finally again with the plain water. 120kg capacity of chutes are there. It included
by 8 rice chutes, 8 sambar chutes and 60 sambar vessels. There are vegetable chopping machines, each of
which can cut more than half a ton of vegetables in an hour. After chopping and washing, the raw materials
are dropped down to the second floor of the kitchen via chutes, where they are collected for cooking.

The Second floor is a hub of viewers gallery. Board room, admin block also there in 2nd floor. By standing
in 2nd floor viewers gallery we can observe the cooking area which takes place in 1st floor.

The first floor of the kitchen is where all the cooking takes place. The process employed is steam based
cooking to ensure maximum efficiency. Massive rice cookers that take about fifteen minutes to cook 100kg
of rice, which can feed 1200 students. The daily requisite amount of rice is transferred from the master silo
to day silos from where it is washed and sent to the cooking floor through gravity. We saw almost zero
human contact with the food being prepared, ensuring high levels of hygiene.

Advantages of using steam:

o Cost effective
o Early cooking
o Healthy and nutritious food (doesn’t lose its nutrition)
o Eco friendly

About seven to eight tons of dal was being used in this single kitchen per day. The sambar (a popular South-
Indian gravy dish of lentils and vegetables) is also cooked in steam heated cauldrons, which take about two
hours to prepare sambar that can serve 6,500 students. There are 48 varieties of sambar they do. And the
taste is assured by 10 quality parameters. Chapathi also prepared here using well organised machines.
Machine takes 40kg of flour once and makes chapathies.

After cooking, the rice is sent down to the packing area, which is located on the ground floor. The rice
comes down again through chutes, under which large, air-tight, stainless steel containers are placed to pack
the rice and take it to the schools. The emphasis on hygiene is plain to see at all stages, as all cooks and
helpers are dressed in clean overalls, with head caps, large hand gloves and gum boots. All employees and
guests are given special footwear which they can wear only inside the kitchen.
The dal or sambar is also sent to the packing area by gravity, where it is packed into separate containers. The
daily meal at Bangalore schools consists of rice, sambar and curd. A sweet treat is included once a week.

The packed food is loaded onto custom-designed delivery vans. A complex system has been worked out to
optimize routes and it is a daily task to ensure that the right containers are reaching the right schools. There
are many variables that need to be factored in like the number of students in each school, whether they
require assistance with serving plates and vessels, etc.

The vans are ready to leave by 6 am from the centralized kitchen to reach the government schools situated
even in the remote areas of rural Bangalore by lunch time. There are 35 routes served by this kitchen which
caters to 720 schools and 1.2 Lakh students. There is another centralized kitchen in Bangalore, the oldest
one of Akshaya Patra Foundation, located in the premises of the ISKCON temple, which still caters to 600
schools with over 1Lakh students.

The arrival of the blue vans is eagerly awaited by the students. We went to a government school in
Bangalore served by the Akshaya Patra kitchen, and got to experience first-hand the distribution of the meal
and the bright smiles of the students. Once the food was unloaded at the school, the students gathered in the
main courtyard to say a prayer of thanks, after which the students were encouraged to get their plates and
collect the food.

The students then sat together and had their meal, while chatting happily. They were allowed to go for any
number of helpings. Akshaya Patra provides meals to these schools as part of the government mid-day meal
program. However, the government funding accounts for only about half the cost of the meal. To ensure
good quality and unlimited quantity of its meals, Akshaya Patra raises the remaining funds from
corporations, individual donors and institutes.
Sponsors profile

Akshaya Patra has an annual budget of $35 million, and 60 percent of that comes from the Indian
government in the form of cash or donations of food. The other 40 percent comes from corporate and
private donors, such as Deshpande, chairman of Akshaya Patra, Corporate companies include Infosys,
NMBT, NMDC, LIONS CLUB, CHANDRA FOUNDATION etc. and some individuals also included.

Abu Dhabi is one of the leading partners of The Akshaya Patra Foundation. The company is sponsoring
mid-day meals for 2000 plus children across various locations in Bengaluru. Auma India has been partnering
with The Akshaya Patra Foundation from the year 2008, even before CSR became a policy under the
companies' act.

Achievements/ Awards
  Supported Flood-relief Efforts by Handing out
 ICAI Gold Shield Award for Excellence in Financial Reporting for 2016-17

Supply Chain Management

Supply chain in Akshaya Patra followed as under,

Raw Material Akshaya Patra Schools

Kitchen
Supplier

Akshaya Patra is having vendors for raw material all over the India. Each food grain, rice, wheat and
everything will be provided with separate batch codes for easy and best quality control.
Meals prepared will be sent to schools within 12:30 p.m. There are 29 vehicles serve meals to different
government and non-government schools from Vasanthpuram kitchen. And the meal temperature will
remain minimum 65 degree. Meals will not spoil till 24 hrs.

In this way raw material received from vendors converted to meal in kitchen and it will be distributed
to schools accordingly.

Inventory Management

Vegetables are procured freshly on a daily basis. After procurement, sorting of vegetables is done to retain
the best quality. All the vegetables are cleaned with potable water and sanitised before the cutting process.

Cold storage is used to store ready-to-cook cut vegetables to retain freshness. Rice is supplied by Food
Corporation of India (FCI). Before the cooking process, the rice is machine-cleaned and wash thoroughly.

In order to ensure all the raw materials are fresh, all the kitchen follow the FIFO (First In First Out) and
FEFO (First Expiry First Out) methods while issuing the raw material for production.

Kitchens are able to properly identify , store and retrieve the raw materials in an appropriate manner by
using the above method.

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strength:

● Strong Awareness (helps in getting donors)

● Based on a Good cause

● Proper supply chain management

 ● Well equipped and improved technology

● Strong relationship with existing supplier

Weakness:
● Delivering to distance places

● Having more locations but less production places

● Reaching all over India

Opportunities:

● Changing Technology Landscape

● Developments in Artificial Intelligence

Threats:

● Quality maintainance

● Reaching distanced places

● Reaching on time
Learning Experience

The industrial visit to Akshaya Patra was a wonderful visit from our college. We were
around 50 to 55 students went from our ‘ A ’ section and our visit was really memorable one.
The visit provided me in depth understanding in various processes undertaken at the
Akshaya Patra. They gave some physical works to do, so that we came to know that how to
do that particular work and got proper idea about that.

As an MBA student syllabus knowledge is not enough to us. Actual working condition and
management of physical, human and financial resources in real situation plays a major role
in organisation. Our syllabus contains theoretical description about the steps and functions
of Organisations. But we did not understand the real applications of steps and functions with
in the organisation. But after visiting to Akshaya Patra we came to know that the actual and
real working condition. Though books give proper knowledge but mere knowledge is having
no value addition to our future. Having a real experience will contribute in great results. It’s
really glad to say that I got an opportunity to experience through our college and great co-
operation of facilitator of Akshaya Patra foundation, Vasanthapuram.

SUBMITTED BY UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF

Darshan A J. Prof. RAKESH NAGARAJ

DEPARTMENT OF MBA AND RESEARCH CENTER

RNS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Uttarahalli – Kengeri Road, Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Post

Channasandra, Bangaluru, Karanataka (560098)