As part of its global
efforts to support nonprofit organizations around the world that help meet
critical human needs, Cisco today announced an agreement with Akshaya Patra
Foundation which will be accelerating digitization of their kitchens across 7
locations in India. Akshaya Patra Foundation is the world’s largest
(non-profit) mid-day meal programme serving wholesome food to over 1.66 million
children from 13,958 schools across 12 states in India. Digitization of Akshaya
Patra kitchens and key offices will help them realize significant gains in
productivity, scalability, and cost-efficiency and accelerate Akshaya Patra’s
goal to reach 5 Million children by 2020.
As part of this agreement,
Cisco will deploy an enterprise-grade network and collaboration suite connecting
their kitchens and their offices by enabling end to end IT & process
digitization. The upgraded Akshaya Patra network will connect their
offices in Bangalore, Gurgaon, and field kitchens across 7 locations (2
kitchens in Bangalore, one each in Lucknow, Vrindavan, Bellary, Guwahati, and
Jigani) on a single network which will enable them to efficiently track their
kitchen production, distribution, supply chain and logistics.
Through digitization,
Akshaya Patra will have faster and better connectivity in their field offices
which is critical to the kitchen’s operational performance, and necessary to
support virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing. In addition, Akshaya
Patra can now analyze, and operationalize disparate sets of data in near
real-time helping them to improve the overall speed, security and
responsiveness of the programme. This digitization effort is expected to
increase Akshaya Patra’s operational efficiency by about 5% in the initial
phase, which will help them extend the mid-day meal program to over 28500
students everyday immediately.
Cisco has been associated with Akshaya Patra since 2007 through
employee giving, volunteering and disaster relief assistance. In the aftermath
of the 2015 Chennai floods, Cisco sponsored Akshaya Patra’s first
kitchen-on-wheels. The kitchen-on-wheels can run around the clock, with
un-interrupted power supply to provide 2000 meals every two hours when
stationed at any site post a disaster. In the aftermath of the recent floods in
Gorakhpur, this kitchen generated about 100,000 meals.
“Technology connects people in meaningful ways and has the power
to create new opportunities and boost economic growth and well-being. Cisco is
committed to supporting scalable and self-sustaining programs that use
technology to address some of society's biggest challenges. For the past 20
years, we have applied our technology and expertise to accelerate global
problem solving and positively affect people, society, and the planet.” - Tae
Yoo, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Cisco.
“We are excited to work with Cisco to digitize our operations.
Small improvements in operational efficiency can have a big impact when you
distribute at scale. Currently most of the data collection and planning
is manual; with a rapidly growing network of kitchens, the network platform we
are putting in place today will help us in our digitization journey by enabling
real-time data collection, streamline kitchen production, distribution and
supply chain. All of this will help us in our mission to reach more
children.” - Shridhar Venkat, Chief Executive Officer, The
Akshaya Patra Foundation.
“In India, we focus on
positively affecting and engaging with the communities in which we work, live,
and play. Using the power of the network to digitally enable nonprofit
organizations such as Akshaya Patra is a great example of how technology can
help solve the world's most challenging problems. We are committed to focusing
on solutions that can be scaled to benefit millions in underserved communities
around the world.” - VC Gopalratnam, SVP-IT and
CIO-International, Cisco.
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