Prof. Anshuman Tripathy and Akshat Raj win ‘EFMD Case Writing Competition 2020’ in the category ‘Indian Management Issues and Opportunities’

The case titled, ‘The Akshaya Nidhi Foundation – in Aid of Akshaya Patra’ shows how a non-profit social organization can create a parallel for-profit organization, using existing resources, to sustain itself economically

23 April, 2021, Bengaluru: Professor Anshuman Tripathy, faculty in the Production & Operations Management area of IIM Bangalore, and Akshat Raj, alumnus of the two-year MBA at IIMB, have won the ‘EFMD Case Writing Competition 2020’ in the category ‘Indian Management Issues and Opportunities’ for their case titled, ‘The Akshaya Nidhi Foundation - in Aid of Akshaya Patra’.

The case deals with how a non-for profit social organization can structure with additional businesses to sustain itself economically. Akshaya Patra, founded in the year 2000 by ISKCON, to provide mid-day meals to school children, had been serving about 1.7 million children daily from 33 kitchen across 11 states in India by 2017.  However serving meals to such a large number of children, per the nutritional guidelines of respective state governments, had its own cause of concerns. The gap between the cost of preparing these meals and reimbursement by the government kept increasing.  In addition, they had set themselves an ambitious target of feeding 5 million children per day by the year 2025. This led to the setting up of Akshaya Nidhi, a for-profit organization that would utilize existing spare resources and follow the values and beliefs of Akshaya Patra. The case describes how this organization was setup, and discusses the ways forward. The case helps students appreciate the importance of setting the organization structure right to support a growing organization, the challenges faced by not-for-profit organizations in sustaining themselves, and how resources are shared between businesses which are distinct in the goals that they pursue.