Brands
Zomato acquires Feeding India to work on food safety
MUMBAI: Restaurant search and discovery service provider Zomato has acquired Feeding India, a not-for-profit organisation that serves food to the underprivileged in the country. The latter will remain a non-profit entity while Zomato will fund the entire salaries of the team and some core initiatives, including the development of ‘Feedi.ng’ app.
Zomato will also revamp the Feeding India website, and in the spirit of transparency, will be publishing quarterly financials. It is aiming to get the first Feeding Global – Financial Transparency Report, out by October 2019.
As shared by Zomato founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal in a blog post the firms have been working together for the past six months and were closely associated during the Odisha floods as well. “Within these 6 months of working together, we’ve been able to unlock the massive potential that comes with our reach and scale. In December of 2018, Feeding India distributed 78,300 monthly meals to the underprivileged. That figure has now skyrocketed to over 1.1 million meals a month.”
He further wrote, “Similarly, the number of cities Feeding India is active in has risen from 65 to 82. The number of Hunger Heroes (volunteers at Feeding India) has grown from 8,500 to 21,500.”
Zomato has earlier been associated with several other organisations, for the cause of food safety, including Robin Hood Army and Akshaya Patra Foundation.
“We have now begun a new, and a more concrete chapter around serving the underserved by acquiring Feeding India. It is an important step for us, as both organisations share a common dream of ending hunger and food wastage — not just in India, but globally," he added.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
