MUMBAI: Restaurant search and discovery service provider Zomato has acquired Feeding India, a not-for-profit organisation that serves food to the underprivileged in the country. The latter will remain a non-profit entity while Zomato will fund the entire salaries of the team and some core initiatives, including the development of ‘Feedi.ng’ app.

Zomato will also revamp the Feeding India website, and in the spirit of transparency, will be publishing quarterly financials. It is aiming to get the first Feeding Global – Financial Transparency Report, out by October 2019.

As shared by Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal in a blog post the firms have been working together for the past six months and were closely associated during the Odisha floods as well. “Within these 6 months of working together, we’ve been able to unlock the massive potential that comes with our reach and scale. In December of 2018, Feeding India distributed 78,300 monthly meals to the underprivileged. That figure has now skyrocketed to over 1.1 million meals a month.”

He further wrote, “Similarly, the number of cities Feeding India is active in has risen from 65 to 82. The number of Hunger Heroes (volunteers at Feeding India) has grown from 8,500 to 21,500.”

Zomato has earlier been associated with several other organisations, for the cause of food safety, including Robin Hood Army and Akshaya Patra Foundation.

“We have now begun a new, and a more concrete chapter around serving the underserved by acquiring Feeding India. It is an important step for us, as both organisations share a common dream of ending hunger and food wastage — not just in India, but globally," he added.