Healthy and well-nourished children can make a nation grow leaps and bounds.

At over 315 million, a huge percentage of India’s children are in school. That’s over 315 million future members of the workforce.

At the same, 66 million children across the developing world (including India) attend classes on a hungry stomach. It’s no secret that health and education are very closely linked: a well-nourished child can learn, concentrate and study better.

While the government has done a lot to ensure the all-round development of these children with the help of a mid-day scheme, it is a mammoth task.

And that’s why we’ve teamed up with the ISKCON foundation (in Maharashtra) and Akshaya Patra (in Karnataka) to help feed 1.5 lakh school children a hot, nutritious mid-day meal, every day.

This initiative covers rural schools near our manufacturing plants in Vijayanagar (Karnataka) and Tarapur and Ratnagiri (Maharashtra), but we’re working on extending it to our other facilities too.

We’ve found that besides encouraging children to come to school, these mid-day meals’ benefits don’t stop at the classroom door. Economic models show that every US$1 invested in school meal programmes bring US$3-10 economic return from improved health, education and productivity.

It’s just a matter of time before we take the next step towards making our children healthy and happy.