The Akshaya Patra Foundation

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The Akshaya Patra Foundation was founded in July 2000 by Madhu Pandit Dasa, an IIT Bombay trained civil engineer turned monk of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, who serves as the Foundation's Founder and Chairman. Founded by devotees of ISKCON Bangalore, the program began serving mid-day meals to 1,500 children across five government schools in Bengaluru Rural District from a single kitchen on the Hare Krishna Hill campus of ISKCON Bangalore, inspired by ISKCON founder A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada's stated vision that no one within ten miles of a temple should go hungry.

From that single kitchen the Foundation has grown into the world's largest not-for-profit school lunch programme, preparing and delivering hot meals and grocery kits to government school children across India to fight hunger and encourage school attendance, now headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, and registered as an independent charitable trust under the Indian Trusts Act 1882, serving as the implementing partner for India's PM POSHAN school meal programme. That transition from a single ISKCON temple kitchen to a nationwide implementing partner for a central government programme is itself a measure of how far the Foundation grew from Madhu Pandit Dasa's own original 1,500 child feeding effort in Bengaluru Rural District.

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

The audited financial statements of the Foundation's separately incorporated United States support entity, Akshaya Patra Foundation USA, state that in 2023 The Akshaya Patra Foundation provided hot, nutritious meals and grocery kits to more than 2.1 million children daily in over 22,000 government schools across 16 Indian states, operating from 74 centralized and two de-centralized kitchen locations to fight childhood malnutrition and encourage school attendance, a reach the atlas records as reaching some 2.25 million children daily across 16 states and 3 union territories today.

The Foundation's India based parent body does not appear to publish a single consolidated audited financial statement openly available online, but its US support entity does publish its own independently audited statements, audited by the outside accounting firm KellyVitaleRaffol LLC with an unmodified opinion, reporting total expenses of about 5.0 million dollars for the year ended 31 December 2023, of which about 2.7 million dollars was granted directly to the India based parent body whose own governance has repeatedly won the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India's Gold Shield award for financial reporting.