Photo by Saumya Khandewal

Every evening on the streets of Pune, in western India, a 67-year-old man offers food to the people in his community in need of a meal. He’s a community leader in the Robin Hood Army, a no-funds volunteer organization with a massive goal to end world hunger, community by community.

This platform for goodness—which operates much like a franchise, with an umbrella organization housing nascent chapters—started with Neel Ghose (MBA 2019) while he was working for Zomato, India’s largest food-delivery app. His job was to set up Zomato in international markets. It was in Portugal that the company teamed up with partner organization ReFood, and Ghose liked the model: repurposing surplus food from restaurants to feed the local community, with hyperlocalized food drives run by local volunteers. He brought the idea home to two friends in India, and they cofounded the Robin Hood Army in 2014.

Ghose and his partners scaled the operation by building chapters of Robins around the world to operate in their own cities, teaming up with restaurants and other organizations within those communities. There is only one cardinal rule: No money should ever change hands. “But outside that, folks are free to innovate,” he says.

Innovation was important throughout the pandemic as the Robin Hood Army tried to reach senior citizens in lockdown. So the organization partnered with WhatsApp and Uber, India’s largest ride platform. “We realized we had Robins in almost every single neighborhood across the country. So, if someone reached out to us and asked, ‘Can you please give these groceries to our uncle who’s staying in this part of the city?’ a Robin would do that with a free ride from Uber.”

The goal behind the Robin Hood Army is enormous: Tackle global hunger one meal at a time. To date, Robins have served 83.2 million people in 269 cities across 13 countries, through a network of 183,900 Robins. How close are they to their goal? One percent. “Obviously, the problem is gigantic,” says Ghose of the estimated 800 million people who go hungry each day. “But whether we serve a million meals or whether we serve ten, every meal does its bit to make a difference and spread a smile.”

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