By Tricitynews Reporter
Chandigarh
12th October:- 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.
Tae Yoo, Senior Vice President,
Corporate Affairs, Cisco commented that 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.
Shridhar Venkat, Chief Executive
Officer, The Akshaya Patra Foundation said that 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.
VC
Gopalratnam, SVP-IT and CIO-International, Cisco said that 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.
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