Khaana Chahiye Foundation began 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.
In March 2020, Khaana Chahiye Foundation started out as a community-driven relief operation as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, which left thousands of people in Mumbai in dire need of food. Their story began when co-founders Ruben Mascarenhas and Pathik Muni distributed around 200 cooked meals to over 500 people who were stranded under a flyover in the suburb of Andheri.
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.
Key Areas of Work
Why We Love Khaana Chahiye
• Community mobilisation: Khaana Chahiye’s strength lies in its people. During the pandemic, the organisation operated at its peak, serving nearly 95,000 meals daily across Mumbai. It is the volunteers who have shaped Khaana Chahiye into what it is today. Even after the pandemic, most of the work taken up by the organisation is volunteer-driven.
• Supporting livelihoods: The community kitchens in Kurla and Ulhasnagar are operated by women and transgender persons respectively, who were beneficiaries of the initiative during the pandemic. Today, they serve others from similarly marginalised backgrounds, especially those who are often left out of government safety nets. This also instills a sense of financial independence and dignity among them, enabling them to contribute to their households.
• Perseverance to continue combating hunger: While Khaana Chahiye started out as a relief operation during the pandemic, it continues to make efforts toward combating hunger. They do so by leveraging technology to map clusters where people need food, telling meaningful stories on social media, closely collaborating with the communities they serve along with institutional partners to mobilise funds, and feed those in need across Mumbai—with empathy at the heart of it all.
How They Work
What does it take Khaana Chahiye to feed a city?
10
Core Team Members
300
Volunteers
70—80
Active Volunteers
2
Community Kitchens
77,96,095+
Meals Served
73,406+
Grocery kits delivered
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 the Qureshi Nagar neighbourhood 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.
“We were very driven to get those we wanted to help become part of the solution. Food is central to existence, and we see that play out in the [community] kitchens.”
The Kurla Kitchen serves around 290 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 transgender persons 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 transgender persons in need of food.
Dr. Yoga Nambiar, a trans rights activist, established Dusra Ghar (‘Second Home’ in English), a community centre for transgender persons in Ulhasnagar, in 2022. 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. In August 2024, both kitchens reduced the number of meals served. 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.
Managing a Crisis Situation
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.
"Our strength is that we can mobilise 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 railway 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 in April-May 2021, the Khaana Chahiye team had improved their operations. They scaled down to serving around 50,000 meals per day. They worked with nutritionists, who were part of the team of 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 the grocery needs of marginalised families in Mumbai 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.
Operating 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 every 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 the suburb of Deonar. 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.
Multilingual Chatbot and Hunger Map Project
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. 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. For instance, they are currently trying to connect people, especially those who are homeless, to the current Public Distribution System or Ration Card Scheme.
In the future, beyond sustaining its operations, Khaana Chahiye hopes to play a more proactive role at the policy level. Currently, they are working on the Hunger Map Project, an evidence-based policy intervention that leverages technology and crowd-sourced feedback to identify clusters in Mumbai that need assistance with food. The project aims to offer a better visualisation of the existing problem while also encouraging active civic engagement in coordination with the existing local government infrastructure to combat hunger across the city.
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.
How You Can Help
One of the major challenges confronting Khaana Chahiye Foundation is mobilising funds on a regular basis. As the problem of hunger is still largely invisible, crowdfunding becomes difficult. If you would like to contribute through donations, you can 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.
