Zero Hunger

This perspective connects with wider institutional interests in supply chains, emerging technologies, sustainability and business-model innovation. Together, these areas create a basis for examining how technology adoption, market structures and institutional support can influence agricultural productivity and food-system resilience. Research also appears in a more applied form through food entrepreneurship.

Yango’s development included more than 50 parent interviews and a review of over 100 research papers, followed by work on nutrition, taste, hygiene, sourcing and product design. The process connects customer research with the practical requirements of developing children’s nutrition products. This connection between inquiry and experimentation is particularly relevant to food, where a product has to work simultaneously for nutrition, consumer preference, production, sourcing and commercial viability.

Making nutritious food part of everyday campus life

Masters’ Union's contribution to food security begins with the environment experienced by its own students and employees. Across campus locations, students and staff have access to multiple dining options offering different cuisines and dietary choices. Fruit and salad counters, South Indian meals and vegetarian and plant-based choices sit alongside a wider range of everyday food options, creating variety across academic and working days.

The Commons Food Baskets add a more immediate layer of access. Complimentary fresh fruit and other refreshments are made available at designated campus locations, while fresh fruit is also provided through campus food facilities. Healthy-snacking vending points extend access beyond standard canteen hours.

Food and refreshments are also provided during selected academic programmes, workshops and institutional activities, helping ensure that long periods of participation on campus are supported by access to food. The intention behind these practices is not to treat healthy eating as an occasional wellness activity. It is to make nutritious options visible and accessible within ordinary campus routines.

Using food more responsibly

How food is served and what happens to surplus also forms part of campus stewardship. Reusable plates and serviceware are used in relevant dining settings to reduce dependence on disposable materials. Where safe and consumable food remains after institutional events, surplus food is redirected where feasible instead of being routinely discarded.Food-waste measurement is currently partial rather than institution-wide. Existing food environments such as the Food Lab, canteen and institutional events nevertheless provide a practical setting for understanding where waste occurs across purchasing, preparation, serving and consumption. Together, these practices connect food access with a second responsibility: making better use of the food and resources already within the campus system.

The TIEEDI Permacultural Foundation immersion in Darjeeling extended this understanding into regenerative agriculture. Students observed practices including composting, natural farming, ecological restoration and circular use of materials, examining how farming systems can reduce waste while conserving resources and supporting long-term productivity. These engagements sit alongside relationships with organisations such as ITC, Amul, Sonalika Tractors, Adani Wilmar and Glenburn Tea Estate. Together, they expose students to different parts of the food economy, from farm productivity and processing to distribution, commodity markets and consumer products.

Working directly with farmers and producers

Students also work directly with farmers, food producers and manufacturers to source the products their ventures sell and to check that quality holds from batch to batch. Dealing directly with the people who grow and make the product shows students how sourcing, pricing and quality control shape a food business. It also helps the producers. A venture that buys directly gives farmers and small manufacturers a direct buyer for their produce and a clear standard to meet, which supports their incomes and their access to markets.

Connecting food with community need

Food-related outreach also addresses more immediate forms of need. Through an initiative undertaken with the Robin Hood Army, food and other resources were distributed to more than 250 residents of Ghata Village. The programme brought students into direct engagement with a neighbouring community while responding to immediate material needs. Masters’ Union has also created opportunities for farmers and food producers to engage directly with the campus community, connecting producers with consumers while giving students greater visibility into the economics behind food production and sale.

Together, these engagements show two sides of food security: ensuring people can access food today while understanding the systems that determine whether producers can build viable livelihoods tomorrow.

Learning how food systems actually work

Students at Masters’ Union encounter food and agriculture as interconnected economic systems rather than isolated industries. Questions of production, procurement, processing, logistics, storage, pricing, nutrition, waste and consumer behaviour are explored through field immersion, entrepreneurship and interaction with practitioners operating across the food value chain. PGP immersions provides the strongest expression of this approach. Seven agri-food immersions take students into different parts of India's food and agricultural economy, allowing them to see how managerial decisions affect producers, businesses and consumers.

At Sonalika Tractors in Punjab, students examine how farm mechanisation influences agricultural productivity. At Amul in Anand, they encounter a farmer-owned cooperative model connecting rural incomes with processing, cold chains and market access. An immersion with Adani Wilmar provides exposure to edible-oil processing and distribution, while work with ITC connects agricultural sourcing with post-harvest management, quality, logistics and market integration.

The Darjeeling learning journey adds a different perspective. At TIEEDI, students encounter regenerative agriculture and circular resource use. Glenburn Tea Estate provides a view into plantation management and agricultural value chains, while a tea-auction simulation explores price discovery, quality differentiation and how value is distributed through commodity markets.These experiences help students connect decisions that might otherwise appear separate. A change in technology can affect farm productivity. Procurement can affect farmer income. Storage and logistics can determine how much food reaches the market. Branding and processing can change the value of an agricultural product. Pricing decisions can influence both producer economics and consumer access. Practitioner-led sessions connect food manufacturing and organic-food entrepreneurship with product development, sourcing, supply chains and consumer demand. Industry perspectives from Veeba and First Bud Organic complement field learning across the food value chain.

Building food businesses

Students can also move from understanding food systems to building within them. The Masters’ Union Food Lab gives aspiring food entrepreneurs access to commercial kitchens, culinary expertise, food-safety and FSSAI support, procurement assistance, supply-chain guidance, aggregator onboarding and mentorship. This reduces some of the financial and operational barriers involved in testing a food business from the ground up.

The learning process moves from understanding a customer and designing a product to paid trials, feedback, product iteration, unit economics and eventually operating through platforms such as Swiggy and Zomato. Founders are expected to prove not simply that people like an idea, but that the business can repeatedly serve customers and sustain itself commercially. More than 15 food ventures have emerged through this wider ecosystem, spanning nutrition, packaged food, beverages, regional foods and healthier alternatives. They include ventures such as Flourish Foods, Yango, Bambaii Foods, Eat Atlas, Nomo, House of Khakhra, Aishwarya Rice and Hookd. Hookd, founded by a Masters’ Union student, was shortlisted in 2026 for the AMBA BGA Startup of the Year award for the innovation in its food product.

Some address nutrition directly. Flourish Foods has developed functional flours using ingredients such as beetroot, spinach and fenugreek. Laboratory results reported by the venture found selected products with substantially higher iron and fibre content than regular flour. Bambaii Foods began as a student experiment with nuts, seeds and seasonings and has since served more than 5,000 customers. Others demonstrate how food entrepreneurship can become a viable local business. Lexi's Gourmet Sandwiches, supported through the Masters’ Union entrepreneurial ecosystem, crossed an annualised revenue run-rate of INR 1 crore within three months of launch.

Student ventures in food

Masters’ Union supports student ventures with institutional grants and mentoring, and several work on food. Eat Real, an undergraduate venture, makes vacuum-fried vegetable snacks and sources raw material from farmers with Tamil Nadu government support. Nutrifarms, a protein-infused millet snack brand, sells through six retail stores in Maharashtra.