finish dinner
you’d have packed it in a bag and maybe
given it to someone on the street now
what you did helped one of 194 million
Indians who went hungry that evening
having said that did you know 40% of the
food produced in our country gets wasted
and thrown away now the problem has
never been lack of food but access to
that food hunger is not something which
needs to be solved by the United Nations
or the government logistics can and will
provide the solution over the last five
years I’ve been working with a start-up
Zomato it’s a mobile app through which
users can find restaurants in the
neighborhood work took me to Portugal
where I came across this unique
organization called V food what they did
was amazing in their free time
volunteers would collect excess food
from restaurants and give it to the less
fortunate
Wow how is Namur by how simple and how
doable this idea was now immediately
after coming back to Delhi I got in
touch with my old friend Arnold we
figured we’ve been making it easier for
millions of people to click and find
food options why can’t we do the same
for people who don’t have two square
meals a day we decided to bring the idea
home we had to go back to the startup
basics or matching demand and supply
through simple logistics solutions this
is how the Robin Hood army started our
Robins are young professionals and
students they do this in their free time
it’s a very simple model it’s hyper
local in nature what I mean by that
is let’s say in a locality like a Bandra
the food will come from restaurants in
Bandra the people who give the food will
be residents or Bandra and this will go
to homeless people orphanages HIV
patients in the cluster that’s how we
[Applause]
I vividly remember the 26th of August
2014 it was a first food drive a few
friends and I were under the horse carts
lyova of saw Delhi
we saw a family of six sharing the food
from one leftover pizza just down the
road there was an old couple
the aunty was blind they were looking
for food in a trash can now make no
mistake I am brought up in India I have
Ruby of grown ups in poverty but what
was overwhelming at that moment was that
these are our neighbors and we have no
idea of the sheer scale of hunger and
neglect just ten minutes from where we
left this goddess thinking serving
people once in a while might feel good
to the conscience but would this create
any difference in a place where millions
are going hungry
it was obvious we had to scale we had to
reach more restaurants more people more
cities luckily a lot of my friends
agreed with this and we started setting
up Robert origami chapters across the
country
anyone could sign up online he was
exciting the press supported us
volunteers came by the hundreds Facebook
went viral and the best part was
restaurant owners were so generous in
fact some of them instead of giving
excess food actually gave freshly cooked
honestly the robbing our army is not a
structured NGO nor is it a large civic
movement it is a simple platform of
regular people who want to help and
now this is not about just merely
handing out food I’d like to believe
that we have a baseline of compassion in
what we do there’s this girl’s orphanage
in South Delhi where we’ve been going
for several months now a lot of the
Robins who go there happen to be lawyers
now while they give the food over the
months they’ve been having animated
discussions about why do your homework
on time why keep in touch with what’s
happening in politics small things like
even saying thank you or something as
insignificant as taking a selfie the
amazing thing is that after months of
these discussions and interactions eight
of these girls actually want to pursue
law as a career now this it doesn’t stop
here this actually like we’ve now
started something very ambitious called
the Robin Hood Academy basically across
all our cities in India we have regular
weekend classes conducted by the Robins
for on the street not just for children
but also does the best part is that
right now the whole curriculum is
structured and now 50 of the young boys
and girls who come out from the Academy
in the last two months are actually now
now you must have had that moment where
you’ve read something into people and
you want to do something about it but
you just don’t know how right now the
awesome thing is that we have a platform
where youngsters can actually execute
real solutions to the problem their
local community face in – 2016
there was a severe water drought in the
latter district of Maharashtra several
farmers had committed suicide
our Robins across Mumbai and Pune they
actually got the whole neighborhood
offices stewards students colleges and
they brought they mobilized seventy five
thousand litres of water which they
transported through a special train
every Monday Wednesday and Friday think
less and do more now as we grew stronger
locally we realized the problems we
fighting or the battles we fighting and
all unique to India on the first country
we spread the army to was our neighbor
Pakistan just working with people from
across the border who think and are like
us has been a unique experience you
would agree that hunger something which
goes way beyond borders and religion and
politics and we now have Robins across
in fact this Independence Day are
professionals of on both sides of the
border in India and Pakistan they
actually brought the entire startup
ecosystem together and we serve food to
500,000 people on the 14th and 15th of
August on both sides of the border they
say young professionals nor all the time
that’s beyond he’s three years old and
he counts for distribution with his mom
in Hyderabad and that’s another auntie
auntie is 86 and she comes annoyed up
when I was Rihanna it’s the only thing
I’d worry about is when it’s my turn to
back this gentleman will go a long long
way now we just have one rule in the
Robin Hood army we do not accept
monetary donations if you want to help
all we require is your time and that too
just two hours of your week now you
might be wondering okay what does this
tours of the week really do rate with no
revenue no employees and no office space
here’s how the two was do we reflects on
our balance sheet we’ve served 1.6
million people through a network of
8,000 Robin’s spread across four
thank you the best part on the credit
side is of course the blessings now the
honest truth is this might seem like a
lot but the truth is we are barely
scratching the surface which is why the
reminder we had just want to send on the
Robin Hood story was a personal wake-up
call for my co-founder honor than me we
realized that the world is not merely
revolve around our professional careers
in a startups la blah blah and there’s
no point in having like a great Network
and degrees unless we use that to at
least attempt to make a difference to
sum this up in one word purpose purpose
is something which is not restricted to
your family your loved ones or your
software career we can be as ambitious
about things which we see around us that
need to be fixed one out of seven people
in this map are going to sleep hungry
tonight the Robin Hood Army’s purpose is
to change that significantly to do that
we need to think less and do more we just want to send on thank you