A dream of distributing food packets among slum dwellers resulted in five students of city college coming up with a business plan that aims to fulfil the project.According to the plan, nutritious food will be distributed to slum dwellers at a nominal cost of Rs 5.
The five management students of the NMIMS college in north west Mumbai recently won the Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition (GSEC), held at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business, for their business plan 'Ahaar' to provide meals to slum dwellers.
As per the plan, nutritious meals would be provided in the form of aluminium foil food packets that contained rice, lentils, jaggery and vegetables at a cost of Rs 5.
"The idea for the business plan came about a year ago from a dream one of the team members, Ankit Jain, had in which he was distributing packets of food to children living in slums," N G Sreejith, one of the team members, told PTI.
After discussing it with fellow team members, the five students decided to come up with a business plan to provide cheap nutritious meals to people living in slums, he said.
To understand the food habits of slum dwellers the students visited slums in Dharavi and Juhu to study how people lived there.
"From our study we found that an average slum resident spends about Rs 10 to cook a meal at home. By creating operational efficiencies at each stage, the price of the final food packet was reduced to Rs 5," Sreejith said.
The students found that the savings made in food habits impacted all other aspects of slum dwellers lives since many of them were migrant labourers trying to send money home.
"Also the food provided in the packets provides 700 calories per meal which is the nutritional requirement as per recommendations of the UN," Sreejith said.
The business plan also envisions roping in women of slum areas to prepare the food packets and providing them an opportunity to earn money by doing so.
The NMIMS team consisting of Sreejith, Ankit Jain, Siddharth Bedi and Rahul Aggarwal won the prize for the best business plan which included a cash prize of $10,000.
Students from across the world competed in the GSEC whose objective is to encourage them to find creative solutions to eradicating the problems of poverty in the developing world.
The team will soon work on a test market and implement a pilot project to judge its acceptance among people living in slums, Sreejith said.
"The event has also allowed us to come in touch with potential investors for the scheme which could be useful in implementing the proposal," he said.