Army of home chefs set to serve Covid-affected

Sakshi Aggarwal from Delhi has started a pan-India volunteer initiative to help connect families suffering from Covid with home chefs and volunteers. Titled CoviFeedIndia, the initiative has a live website (covifeedindia.com) that one can visit to look for a food provider close to home.

CoviFeedIndia uses capacity-logic, location and technology to make the process of getting help and giving help very simple and scalable. “A sustainable solution for Covid in India lies in millions of people finding and providing help within their local communities to help their neighbours recover. We have tried to make this process easy, simple and relevant using technology (website),”says Aggarwal, Head, Consumer and Market Intelligence team at the General Mills India Centre.

Anyone searching for home food providers can visit covifeedindia.com to find the closest kitchen options to their home location, currently organised through pin codes. Anyone making home cooked meals for families (paid or free) can simply add their details on the site and make themselves searchable.

“Families struggling with Covid-19 are often too weak to cook themselves, and struggle with access to help due to quarantine norms. While food and nutrition is key to faster recovery, that itself is a challenge in the prevailing situation,” says Aggarwal.

“Numerous home-chefs, tiffin services, and volunteers have come forward to provide home-cooked meals in their neighbourhoods, but their reach is dependent on word-of-mouth and multiple versions of messages, images and lists prepared and circulated in WhatsApp groups and social media platforms. All of this makes it chaotic for people to track. With a lot many people trying to help, it takes time to search for a food provider near one’s location. I am just trying to bring some method to this madness,” she adds.

Aggarwal launched CovidfeedIndia on April 16, and it went live the next day. So far, there are over 350 volunteers/ food providers/ homechefs on the side, while over 1,000 are visiting it daily. “The idea is to provide seamless help in 10 seconds,” says Aggarwal, adding, “With our hospitals choked, we need to enable home recoveries. And CoviFeedIndia is an attempt to help all these impacted families find affordable kitchen services during this difficult period.”

Aggarwal expects a significant surge in demand. “Also, a provider today could be a seeker tomorrow,” she says. A new feature on the site that is expected to go live in a few days, will allow impacted homes to search through their location, and providers to dynamically change their availability in near real-time and switch it off, if they have exceeded capacity,” she adds.

Contact: To list yourself as a food provider or find a food provider, please visit covifeedindia.com/home.  If you have any lists that should be updated on the platforms, share at info@covifeedindia.com or reach out on Instagram/Twitter @covifeedindia

In a nutshell
Anyone searching for home food providers can visit covifeedindia.com to find the closest kitchen options to their home location, currently organised through pin codes. Anyone making home cooked meals for families (paid or free) can simply add their details on the site and make themselves searchable.