The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a nonprofit that provides mid-day meals to over 1.6 million children across India through a network of centralized and decentralized kitchens. It has meticulous procurement, production, storage, and distribution systems to efficiently serve such large volumes of meals while maintaining high standards of quality, safety, and nutrition. Advanced technologies like gravity flow and renewable energy help Akshaya Patra operate its massive kitchens and distribute cooked meals to schools across wide rural areas.

1. The Akshaya Patra

2. What is Akshaya Patra
– The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a not-for-profit
organisation headquartered in Bengaluru, India.
– The organisation strives to fight issues like hunger
and malnutrition in India, by implementing the
Mid-Day Meal Scheme in the government schools
and government-aided schools.
– Since 2000, the organisation has worked towards
reaching more children with wholesome food on
every single school day.

3. – It operates on a Public-Private-Partnership
model. As an implementing partner of the
Mid-Day Meal Scheme, there is
continuous support from the Government
of India, the various State Governments
and associated organisations.
– Akshaya Patra reaches out to 1,689,871
children in 26 locations across 11 states of
India
– It provides them with freshly cooked
meals on all school days. Currently, they
implement the Mid-Day Meal Programme
in 13,210 schools of the country

4. – The Akshaya Patra uses a hub-and-spoke model, they
cooked mass quantities of food and distribute smaller
amounts to individual schools in the surrounding slum
and village areas.
– Centralised Kitchens were developed to help cook
massive quantities food for the distribution among
children.
– As Akshaya Patra expanded services to the rural
districts, a centralized model proved inefficient.
– Because of the dispersed geography of the villages in
the rural districts, Akshaya Patra designed a
decentralized model in which they built small kitchens
to serve the local school children in each village

5. – Akshaya Patra Kitchens have adopted Six Sigma Methodologies
– The Process starts from Supplier Selection, Supplier
Qualification, Supplier Rating etc. to ensure that the right and
best raw materials are procured
– In order to ensure all the raw materials are fresh, all the
kitchens follow the FIFO (First In First Out)and FEFO (First
Expiry First Out) methods while issuing the raw material for
production.
– Methods like Logistic charting for route optimisation, GPRS to
track the delivery vehicles for safety and on-time delivery are
adopted to ensure timely delivery.
– The staff have been trained on 5S, GMP, Lean and Kaizen, and
ISO 22000 Awareness for kitchen employees across all
locations for more than 6,000 man hours.

6. Procurement Process
 Akshaya Patra’s kitchens open at 2:30 a.m. and cooking starts at 3:00 a.m.
The pre-cooking shift begins with sorting of all ingredients, from vegetables
to spices, into the necessary quantities.
– The first vehicle carrying food rolls at 5:30 a.m.
– Cooked foods are transported through heat-insulated, dust-free special
purpose vehicles.

7. Procurement Process
(Continued)
– It uses Hub-and-Spoke Model to distribute small amount
of food to individual schools in the surrounding slum and
village areas. For urban areas, they provide the food
through a centralized kitchen located in Bangalore.
– In the urban areas, vegetables are procured from local
markets through an ongoing relationship with 3rd Party
Vendors. After procurement, sorting of vegetables is done
to retain the best quality.
– The criteria for the selection of vendors is governed by
market rate, offer rate, quality of samples based on the
raw material specification, and the past performance of
the supplier.

8. Supply of Food
– They make the requirements of food grains like rice
one month before.
– Grain and flour requirements are calculated on the
basis of the attendance of the students in each
month.
– Pulses, oil and spices are purchased locally at
subsidized rates.
– Turmeric, chilly, coriander and cumin seeds are
procured from different markets across the country.
– The purchase requirement is raised by the store
department when the stock reaches its reorder level.

9. Procurement Cost (in Rs.)
– Average cost of pulses per kg : 34.26
Average cost of vegetables per kg : 25.75
Average cost of oil & fats per kg : 53.00
Average cost of groceries per kg : 29.10
Average cost of spices per kg : 138.96

10. Limitations
– These large kitchens are not suitable for feeding school
children in rural and other outlying areas because there are
not enough no. of children in these villages to make large
scale production feasible.
– Bad roads make it difficult for food to be distributed widely.
– Each kitchen has its own sourcing, so there is no
consolidated buying which can decrease the cost further.

11. Drivers of Supply Chain
– Facilities
- Size of the decentralized kitchen is small and of centralized kitchen is
bigger to achieve better efficiency.
- Hub and Spoke Model helps us to increase the responsiveness of the
system.
- SHG (Self Help Groups) are developed in the remote areas to improve the
responsiveness of the system.

12. Drivers of Supply Chain
(Continued)
– Inventory
MATERIAL NAME REORDER LEVEL (kg)
DAL 1500
PULSES 500
OIL 2000
SPICES 5 to 50
SALT 400
SUGAR 200
 Because of the large quantity of requirement daily, Akshaya
Patra has to maintain huge safety stock to have large
responsiveness.
 Inventory = 5*175000= 8,75,000 meals of capacity should be
there in the system.

13. Drivers of Supply Chain
(Continued)
– Transportation
- Around 40 vehicles travel 3000km per day from Hubli to
different locations across India.
- SHG acts as 3rd Party Logistics Provider to increase the
responsiveness.
LOCATION COST OF HIRED VEHICLES
HUBLI Rs 16000 per month
BANGALORE Rs 20000 per month
MANGALORE Rs 22000 per month
HYDERABAD Rs 25000 per month

14. Production
Facility

15. Facility Area
Food Cooked
for 1,75,000
Students in 5
Hours
12000kg Rice
& 2500kg
Pulses are
Prepared
Everyday
Production facility area is Flexible
Facility area divided into two parts Pre Processing Area,
Cooking area.
Pre Processing Area includes all the items that are required
for Next day
Cooking Area includes the making of all food items

16. Gravity Flow Technology18 Recipes of
Sambhar
• Unique technology to move food from upper pre processing
area to cooking area
• Long and big pipes are used to transfer the food
• Capable of Producing 1200 liters of Sambhar/Rice in 2 hours
• Helpful in Producing different recipes for different days
• The total production and cook-to-consume times varied
between 5-6 hours and 6-7 hours respectively.

18. Green Energy
• 788.95 Megatons of carbon emission has been saved from being
released in the atmosphere by using thermite briquette boilers
• Briquettes are made up of sustainable agri-waste (groundnut
shells and grain husks)
• High Pressure steam from boilers is used to cook food which
decreases time

19. Storage

20. Storage:-
– In pre-processing perishable vegetables like tomatoes are cut on the
same day of cooking while vegetables which have a longer life like carrot
are physically inspected and cuts a day earlier and stored into cold
storage.
– It uses around 12000 to 15000 kg of rice daily. Once the rice are cleaned
they are stored in silos of capacity 160 MT. silos are equipped with
sensor which keep track of stock.
– They use stainless steel container to stored cooked food which keep it
warm.

21. Technology system
– main technology which ensure proper functioning of this
kitchen are:-
1. Batch tracking system
2. Gravity Flow technology
3. Cooking fuel
4. Silos
5. GPS

22. Quality Check
– Quality check is done at each and every stage of its supply
chain from procurement of goods to delivery of cooked
foods
– Once procure goods is arrived they uses physical inspection
to check quality of goods.
– Temperature is continuously monitored throughout
cooking process as well as at the last moment where food
is delivered.
– They uses warm water to check whether there is any
leakage on milk packet or not

23. Quality lab and experiment
team
– They have their own dedicated team for experimenting
with food in order to find new taste.
– If a new recipe is found to cook the food. First it is test by
its administrator who rates it over several features once all
agree then it is produced for masses.
– Recent study in Karnataka have shown that Food was one
of the main reason of increment in enrolment of students
in government school in villages

24. Quality lab and experiment
team
– Akshaya Patra has opened its first Food Safety and Quality
Control Lab (FSQC Lab) in Ahmedabad
– Aimed to evaluate food from farm to plate
– the technology featuring in the lab are the Atago make
table top refractometer which will be used to analyse total
soluble solids, fat purity, adulteration of oil etc.
– Another interesting machine is the Shimadzu make
spectrophotometer which will be used to evaluate
DNA/protein concentration, absorbance, transmittance and
more.

25. Packing Practices at TAPF
Stainless steel
containers are used to
transport the food.
The food in each
container is based on
the number of
beneficiaries.
Each container is given
a unique label to
identification.
This keeps track of what
food is in the container,
the route (truck) it is
part of, quality checks
and destination
The requirement for
each school is
determined in terms of
the no. of containers
based on the average
beneficiaries.
Milk and roti deliveries
are also done alongside
the other processes.

26. Distribution of the food
Each truck has 4
members – Driver,
route manager, Two
Helpers
Every TAPF owned
delivery vehicle has
custom fittings
inside it to place the
containers
Routes are designed
to ensure food is
delivered at 60◦C
Fixtures Unloading of Containers LIFO Maximum Distance per truck GPS Tracking
Reports are maintained
to ensure the correct no.
as well as quality of food
Cook to consume time <
6 hours
Two trips per day:
@7:30am and @9:30am

27. Fleet of Vehicles
– TAPF owns a fleet of specially designed
vehicles procured from Mahindra &
Mahindra Ltd., Tata and Eicher
– A large number of the trucks are usually
donated by both companies and individuals

28. Quality
Practices
Good Hygiene Practices
• Using safety gloves, shoe covers, foot wears, aprons, hand
sanitizers; and proper hand washing
• Washing of equipment with soap solution; and sterilization of
cauldron, and distribution containers
Good Manufacturing Practices
• Prerequisite Programme for food safety and following the
production process stated in the Standard Operating Process.
Good Storage Practices
• Maintaining good storage conditions for the raw materials to
keep them cool, dry, and clean
• Following the rule of First Expiry First Out (FEFO)
Good Procurement Practices
• Extensive vetting process of suppliers
• Rejection of low quality supplies

29. Conclusion
– Akshaya Patra is an ode to one of humanity’s greatest challenges –
Avoiding Hunger
– Despite its humble beginnings in 2000, TAPF has managed to cater to
1.6 million students across 13,201 schools
– Its Supply Chain and Production operations are unparalleled, handling
almost 2 lakh meals in some of their kitchens
– They have also showed their community sense by keeping the plans and
designs of both their machines and facilities free for people to use