Khaana Chahiye Foundation started out as a citizen-led crisis-management operation focussed on combating hunger in Mumbai during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, it is an NGO that continues to feed those in need within the city through community kitchens and grocery kits.
Key Areas of Work
How does a city come together to combat hunger? In March 2020, Khaana Chahiye Foundation started out as a community-driven relief operation as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which left thousands of people in Mumbai in dire need of food. Their story began when co-founders X and Y distributed around 200 cooked meals to over 500 people who were stranded under X flyover in Y.
Khaana Chahiye sustains its operations—be it providing meals, identifying communities that need their support, or offering grocery support—through collaborations and partnerships. Their current partners include the Poddar Foundation, an NGO which runs Sāmya, a kitchen in South Mumbai; institutions such as the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Centre for the Study of Social Change (CSSC), and more.
Overview of Khana Chahiye’s Work
Supporting Community Kitchens
Currently, Khaana Chahiye supports two community kitchens: one in Kurla, run by a women’s self-help group, and the other in Ulhasnagar, driven by a transgender persons’ collective. Both kitchens were established as an immediate response to curb hunger, and are now the cornerstone of the foundation’s efforts toward hunger relief. With these, Khaana Chahiye is also attempting to create a viable model that the government can eventually—and hopefully—adopt to support multiple community kitchens and serve food across Mumbai.
The Kurla Community Kitchen is Khaana Chahiye’s flagship operation. It is headed by 15 women from Quereshi Nagar who were part of the initiative’s beneficiaries during the first lockdown. The women mobilised and took it upon themselves to change the existing dynamic.
The Kurla Kitchen serves around 400-490 meals every day to marginalised communities, including students at study centres, a daycare centre for underprivileged children, daily wage workers, and disabled and homeless people in the localities of Sahyadri Nagar, Panjrapole, Banjar Tanda, and Wadar Wasti.
Similarly, the Ulhasnagar Community Kitchen—run by trans people who are former victims of human-trafficking and commercial sex work—serves around 175 meals every day to children from marginalised families studying at Thakur Vidyalaya, daily wage and migrant workers from the brick- and jeans-manufacturing industries, and trans people in need of food.
Dr. Yoga Nambiar, a trans rights activist, established Dusra Ghar (‘Second Home’ in English), a community centre for trans people in Ulhasnagar. The centre provides members of the Ulhasnagar Community Kitchen as well as marginalised individuals—especially those trying to move away from begging and sex work—shelter and training for formal job opportunities.
It has been challenging for Khaana Chahiye to sustain the community kitchens in a way that they function independently and can generate separate streams of revenue. Recently, both kitchens reduced the number of meals they serve. Since Khaana Chahiye is their only customer, a funding crunch directly impacts the kitchens. The price per meal has remained constant since the pandemic at rupees 21, and usually consists of dal, rice, roti, and sabzi. While they recognise that this is unfair to the kitchens and the people who run it, it is the only way to sustain their operations.
What does it take Khana Chahiye to feed a city?
11
Core Team Members
300
Volunteers
70—80
Active Volunteers
73,000+ Grocery kits delivered
73,000+ Grocery kits delivered
Managing a Crisis Situation
Khaana Chahiye was at its peak during the pandemic, serving approximately 95,000 to 96,000 meals each day. Citizens saw an immediate need to curb hunger, and came together to mobilise. They reached out to the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) for access to commercial kitchens—that were non-operational owing to the pandemic—where they could cook and pack meals. By April 2020, the demand surged to 40,000 meals a day. At this stage, Khaana Chahiye was operating 21-22 kitchens across Mumbai.
Khaana Chahiye’s on-ground work was at its peak during the pandemic, serving approximately 95,000 to 96,000 meals each day across Mumbai. Citizens saw an immediate need to curb hunger, and came together to mobilise. They reached out to the National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) for access to commercial kitchens—that were non-operational owing to the pandemic—where they could cook and pack meals. By April 2020, the demand surged to 40,000 meals a day. At this stage, Khaana Chahiye was operating 21-22 kitchens across the city.
Actors, artists, poets, stand-up comedians, and musicians came together to raise awareness and crowdfund for Khaana Chahiye. Partnerships with organisations helped sustain the effort when demand exceeded crowdfunding capabilities. For instance, they collaborated with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to address the food requirements of migrants travelling back to their hometowns on government-arranged trains. They managed to distribute food for around 284 trains, serving six lakh migrants. In addition to the train stations, food distribution points were set up on roads leading out of Mumbai to cater to migrants walking out of the city.
By the time of the second lockdown, the Khaana Chahiye team had already improved their operations. They scaled down to serving around 50,000 meals per day. They worked with nutritionists, who were part of the volunteers, to create a seven-day menu with enough variety—an upgrade from the humble khichdi served during the first lockdown. They shifted their focus to support grocery needs of marginalised families who already had the means to cook for themselves.
During the first lockdown, they provided grocery kits to 20,000 families, and by the second lockdown the number had increased to around 48,000-49,000 families.
Khaana Chahiye’s policy avoids using their beneficiaries’ struggles in their communications to crowdfund. This is all the more evident as the organisation grapples with mobilising funds on a regular basis after the pandemic.
Providing an SOS Grocery Service
Khaana Chahiye supports requests for groceries across Mumbai. Upon realising that it was more sustainable and viable to supply groceries during the second lockdown since most beneficiaries had access to cooking apparatus, Khaana Chahiye scaled up their grocery operations Currently, they support grocery needs for about 150-200 families each month.
Khaana Chahiye has a network of 200 individuals and organisations whom they rely on to source on-ground information. Once the lockdown was lifted, they also established institutional partnerships with TISS, which runs a distress helpline and a library in X. With their help, Khaana Chahiye identifies around 30-40 families who need short-term grocery support. They partnered with CSSC, an organisation offering healthcare support in Mumbai’s western slums, whose on-ground workers help Khaana Chahiye identify families in need of grocery support. Besides these partnerships, Khaana Chahiye also follows up on grocery requests through their ‘Report Hunger’ feature via their WhatsApp chatbot.
Leveraging Technology
Once the team at Khaana Chahiye realised that several people who need their help might not have access to their website and social media channels, they developed a multilingual chatbot in partnership with WhatsApp and Gupshup. This became an easier, more accessible way for people to reach out for grocery support or report hunger across the city. The bot collects information in English, Hindi, and Marathi.
On average, the bot receives three to five requests daily. The team then collects detailed information from those requesting groceries to carefully verify them and assess if the individuals qualify for any government schemes.
The Hunger Project
In the future, beyond sustaining its operations, Khaana Chahiye hopes to be more involved at the policy level. They’ve kickstarted their Hunger Map Project, an evidence-based policy intervention that leverages technology and crowd-sourced feedback to identify clusters in the city that need assistance with food. The project aims to offer a better visualisation of the existing problem, and encourage active civic engagement in coordination with the existing local government infrastructure to combat hunger across Mumbai.
Past Collaborations with The Locavore
In April 2023, The Locavore helped raise a total of rupees 3.8 lakhs to support Khaana Chahiye Foundation’s community kitchens. The funds were used to improve their kitchen facilities, and feed thousands of meals to those in need across Mumbai.
In August 2024, The Locavore kickstarted Freedom From Hunger, an ongoing collaborative fundraising project, to support hunger-relief operations like Khaana Chahiye Foundation, and their role in local food systems.
Why Partner with Khana Chahiye
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How You Can Help
Khaana Chahiye Foundation grapples with mobilising funds on a regular basis. For many, hunger is still an invisible issue, making it difficult to crowdfund. If you would like to contribute through donations, reach out to them here.
You can also help the Khaana Chahiye team identify people who need food across Mumbai through their Report Hunger service available on +91-7669800470 as a WhatsApp helpline and on their website.
This story is part of our Organisation Partnership Program. At The Locavore, we strive to keep the practices of an organisation transparent and honest across all forms of partnerships.
“By day five-day six, we had a demand of around 5000-6000 meals across the city that was required. Our operations were increasing—geography-wise, scale-wise—and we had to onboard a lot of people to manage it on the ground."
"Our strength is that we can mobilise the city."
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