Shaktipreneur in Spotlight: Raadhika Gupta, Co-Founder of Foodshaala Foundation

“A large part of the Indian population is unable to access the minimum quantity of healthy food required to nourish the body. Unhealthy food has become an easy choice, leading to non-communicable diseases,” says Raadhika Gupta, Shaktipreneur in Spotlight and Co-Founder &CEO of Foodshaala Foundation, an organization moving towards the vision of a food-secure world. 

The organization aims to tackle the triple problems of undernutrition(lack of proper nutrition), overnutrition( overconsumption of certain foods), and nutrient deficiency.

The inspiration behind the project 

Raadhika pursued her BALLB (Hons) from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, and LLM from Harvard Law School, USA. She was always passionate about working for social change. After coming back, she got to work with the Indian Government and the World Bank. She realized despite massive amounts of money spent on development and technological advancement, more than 19 crore people in India are undernourished. The number of obese people has doubled in the past decade, lifestyle and diet-related disorders are affecting our children, and the consumption of ultra-processed junk food has increased. 

“The dismal situation inspired me to find the solution for increased access and knowledge on healthy food,” she says.

 The idea behind naming the project

Gupta’s vision was to set up a community-based structure to meet the food and nutrition needs of the community. Foodshaala, as the name suggests, represents the ‘abode of food’. 

“We decided on the name after a lot of brainstorming,” she says.

 Journey as an entrepreneur

 Raadhika lacked experience in entrepreneurship or working at the grassroots level. To gain experience, she started volunteering with other organizations engaged in food distribution, speaking to potential beneficiaries, and doing other forms of research. 

“We formally started our work in 2018 and faced various ups and down, including the COVID pandemic,” she says.

She kept pivoting according to the circumstances. 

In 2019, her husband Amit joined Foodshaala full-time. Last year, he also started a for-profit arm of Foodshaala under the brand name Native Roots-providing healthy and tasty alternatives to regular food using Indian-origin healthy ingredients. 

“It has been an interesting journey for us, working together on multiple projects and moving towards our vision,” she adds.

Work done by the organization

Foodshaala’s flagship program is the School Nutrition Awareness Program. It provides children with appropriate knowledge about nutrition in a practical manner to enable them to apply the course content to their daily life.

Foodshaala works with low-income communities to conduct awareness and behavior change programs on food and nutrition.

They run a structured awareness program for children from low-income communities from classes 6 to 8.The program consists of six workshops. These workshops cover topics like macronutrients, micronutrients, diet diversity, how to read food labels, and harm caused by junk food. The program module also includes practical sessions where children plan what goes on their plates. 

“The program uses gamification as an incentive for children to take actual steps toward behavior change,” she explains.

In addition, Native Roots provides products like batter, laddoos, cookies, and savories made from healthy and indigenous ingredients like jowar, ragi, millet, and sattu.

Fooshaala has expert nutritionists working with them. They help develop recipes and advise them on the curriculum for their nutritional awareness sessions.  

Impact of the organization

Initially, the foundation set up community kitchens that were serving daily nutritious meals to more than 1,500 children from low-income communities in Gurugram district, employing local women from the communities and training them to cook.

Foodshaala provided thousands of meals and ration packets, especially during the pandemic, but had to shut down their community kitchens. 

Raadhika realized that rather than serving one meal it would be more impactful if people within the communities learned to prepare these meals. 

They shifted focus towards the awareness programs. 

“Our nutrition awareness program has led to significant improvements in knowledge, attitude, and behavior of children towards healthy eating, increase in diet diversity, and reduction in consumption of junk food,” she adds.

 She gives the example of a school where they did a program. The diet diversity of the students increased by 20%, and their junk food consumption was reduced by around 70%. 

They were awarded the prestigious Nutrition Award 2022 by the World Food Programme, Glenmark Foundation, and Idobro.

 Future plans

 Raadhika plans to scale the School Nutrition Awareness Program to reach more children. 

“We want to include complementary content for parents, practical workshops on growing vegetables and greens, and supporting children to lead their initiatives in food and nutrition through design thinking projects to make the program more effective,” she adds. 

Advice to new entrepreneurs

Raadhika advises women entrepreneursthat if they are clear about their purpose, they should go for it, as the right time is when they start.

“It is also important to have a clear ‘why’, to know why you are doing all this work, especially for social entrepreneurs. There will be many times when things get rough. Having a clarity of purpose helps to keep going in those times,” she says.

Raadhika, the Shaktipreneur

Raadhika joined the School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) India as a Fellow, where she got a nudge to kickstart her work and then joined STEP.

She believes incubation programs provide a much-needed community of support in the challenging and lonely journey of entrepreneurship, provide training on technical aspects, and connect with relevant business and funding opportunities. A year after starting Foodshaala, she felt she was losing touch with her vision as the managerial and operational tasks took most of her time. 

“The STEP program helped me reconnect with my purpose and reflect upon the bigger issues,” she adds.

Raadhika believes that being a part of the STEP community has been an enriching experience, as the members support each other by sharing relevant opportunities and information. She has connected and collaborated with other community members, which has been a great experience.

“The community is my go-to place for support and guidance. The recent Meet-Up held in Delhi demonstrated how close-knit the community is and how much people support each other’s growth,” she says.

During the program, Raadhika received the award and grant for the Best Business Plan. 

“I worked hard on the pitch and business plan. It felt great to be recognized,” she adds.

Foodshaala received the grant during COVID. They used it for developing and partly delivering the nutrition awareness and behavior change program for children from low-income households.

Raadhika, the person

Raadhika loves reading, and The Secret by Rhonda Byrne is her favorite book. She loves holidaying on the pristine beaches of Vietnam. The tangyPav bhaji is her favorite food.The mantra of her life is a quote by J. K. Rowling –

“We must choose between what is easy and what is right.”