In a partnership that will have far reaching impact on thousands of Indians, Khaana Chahiye Foundation, Mumbai’s very own citizen led movement to tackle hunger has partnered with the omnipresent platform WhatsApp and created a ChatBot.
It was launched by former banker Ujwal Thakar, ex-CEO, Pratham India, Give India, who now is a mentor at Khaana Chahiye.In its objective of reaching out to hundreds of people daily to provide meals, Khaana Chahiye now has a simple, powerful tool in the WhatsApp ChatBot.
It functions as a helpline, with any user pinging to the number 76698 00470 being greeted with an automated service, allowing one to report about any hungry person’s details and location.
With this simple technological boost, the Khaana Chahiye team, comprising wholly of young volunteers, will be able to reach out to hundreds of more people and open a new channel of communication with citizens. The ChatBot, available in three languages (Hindi, Marathi and English), has been developed in partnership with WhatsApp and the messaging platform GupShup.
“Reporting cases of hunger was a service previously available via a web form. Now, this level-up makes our initiative accessible to a wider user base of WhatsApp,” explains Swaraj Shetty, co-founder and Digital Lead at Khaana Chahiye, adding, “The idea came from the realisation that many of our beneficiaries are not regular smartphone users. As hunger distress is invisible, we wanted to share a simple one-on-one channel for the needy to reach out to us. I’m glad we’ve made a start, the challenge now is to sustain and more importantly, keep getting financially stronger to serve increasing numbers of people in hunger distress.”
For Gupshup, authorised distributor of WhatsApp’s business solution, this was an opportunity to provide an enriching customer experience. Ravi Sundararajan, COO Gupshup shared “Gupshup has always enabled businesses with interactive messaging and engaging communication. For Khaana Chahiye, the WhatsApp conversational messaging experience we provided gives this cause much-needed impetus and a layer of personalized interaction to ensure an increasing number of individuals can be served every day by ensuring food reaches the needy. We are seeing an uplift in their user engagement and click through rates with the Gupshup enabled WhatsApp solution; we remain committed to help organisations leverage the power of conversational messaging to improve engagement and efficiency.”
Khaana Chahiye’s WhatsApp Helpline: 76698 00470
‘Khaana Chahiye Foundation’ started off as a relief effort in Mumbai on March 29, 2020, the beginning of the world’s toughest lockdown. Its aim was to feed those rendered vulnerable after having lost their primary source of income. During the first lockdown, Khaana Chahiye served 4.6 million meals and distributed 20,000 grocery kits. In the second, it has shared 1.7 million cooked meals and 41,000 grocery kits so far.
Khaana Chahiye is completely powered by crowdfunding. Its three community kitchens in Mumbai collaborate with local partners and are run by all-women self-help groups.
Khaana Chahiye’s beneficiaries include vulnerable communities – primarily daily wage earners, domestic workers, auto-rickshaw drivers, stage artists, tribal communities. Along with this, they are aiding marginalized groups such as commercial sex workers and transgender collectives.
