Arms against malnutrition
Arms against malnutrition

Britannia Nutrition Foundation (BNF) is an initiative to combat malnutrition among children. The programme aims at providing suffering children with extra-fortified products from Britannia. A step towards effacing the problem of malnutrition in the country in collaboration with NGOs and public enterprises. Vinita Bali, MD, Britannia Industries Limited elaborates

Rajni Pandey (RP): It is since when that you started with Britannia Nutrition Foundation and the consequent initiatives in this regard?

Vinita Bali (VB): The Britannia Nutrition Foundation (BNF) was established in October 2009. The whole purpose of establishing BNF is to become the catalyst for getting the right dialogue and purposeful action around a very big problem area called “malnutrition”. While there have been several policy initiatives and actions taken by the government, the complete deliverable result is actually quite pathetic because still 64 years after the independence, we are still talking that 47 per cent of India’s children under the age of five years are malnourished. We are talking about the health indicators. I mean if you look at the human health index, India ranks 143 or 145. We are talking about the fact that our economic progress, which we all are proud of, has far outstripped our social progress. With the result, access to hygiene, sanitation and healthcare, food and nutrition is not available to a large population of our country. We are talking about the fact that because of under nutrition and malnutrition our country loses 3-4 per cent of our GDP every year. People lose work because access to health is not there. Because of all these reason we belief that it was important to at least get all multi sector stock holders into a room together to start with and say how do all of us feel about all these issues, are we committed to solve it and so on. So, we started Britannia Nutrition Foundation two years ago and we got a very encouraging response. This was sort of the first forum at least in India that everybody, who has even a small role to play, is brought in the same deliberation and we would gauge more from the programme where people from the planning commission is going to be there, people from development sector, nutrition field are also going to be there. And our whole thing is that we are the catalyst and the role of the catalyst is to stir the molecules so that action happens.

RP: Are you pursuing these kinds of initiatives abroad as well?

VB: We don’t operate BNF initiatives outside India because we don’t do business outside the country. But our work has been acknowledged by the former President of US, Bill Clinton, as a part of Clinton Global Initiative in 2009 wherein at the closing ceremony one of the things which was talked about was BNF and more importantly about the initiative that Britannia as a company had taken to fortify the products that it sells and to how many people those products reach. Another acknowledgment that we received was in August 2008 where Bill Gates wrote an article for Times Magazine where he talked about what he called creative capitalism, which is how the private sector and private public partnership (PPP) come together to create something that is meaningful, and there he talked about Britannia, Naandi and Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) partnership as one of the most eight creative examples of private public partnership.

RP: Is BNF a part of your CSR activity or do you keep the two initiatives separate?

VB: I don’t belief in CSR, but I strongly belief in corporate responsibility. For me, the difference between the two is that if we are responsible as corporate and incorporate that into our business model then it’s no more a social responsibility, it’s just what we have to do. A lot of time social responsibility is seen as writing a cheque or sponsoring a hospital or sponsoring a school, etc.  I don't believe in that because I believe whatever we do as responsible corporate citizens, we do it in a sustainable manner. So, I would substitute the “S” for corporate social responsibility as corporate sustainable responsibility and the only way in which it is sustainable is when it becomes a part of my business model then I can continue it forever. Suppose, if I leave and a new person comes in my place and he or she doesn’t like what we are doing, they will change it and say now we are going to run some educational institutions. That's why we spent a lot of time thinking about it and we embedded it in our business model and that's why we call it as our corporate sustainable responsibility and not corporate social responsibility.

RP: What kind of market research you do to take record of malnutrition in India? How do you, as a result, plan for the resultant products in this category?

VB: We don't have to do the market research because a large part of these statical reports are made available by the government bodies such as ministry of women and children welfare, ministry of education. Our target audiences are all the people who are malnourished in our country. 70 per cent of the Indian children are iron deficient and anaemic. They reside both in urban and rural India. So, for that we have done the fortification of the products that we sale in the market. When it comes to the severely malnourished, that is where we have to reach with the extra-nutritional products in places like schools or Anganwadi centers.  

RP: How effective are your products?

VB: The efficacy of our product is excellent. We have done field studies where children who had hemoglobin label of 8-9. After about three months of serving specially fortified biscuits, where the biscuit becomes the carrier of iron, their hemoglobin level raises to 11-12. We are very confident of what we are doing and we are not the only one who is trying to erase malnutrition from the country, several other countries have successfully done that before.

RP: What is next when we talk about product launch by Britannia which can be used as a tool to combat malnutrition in India?

VB: We have two kinds of products, one is what we sell in the market, out of which 50 per cent of products we have fortified and those are very good supplement for people who otherwise have a normal diet. These are available at every kirana or retail shop. But these products don’t meet the requirements of those people who are severely malnourished, generally the children. So, we have introduced special nutritional biscuits to meet the need of these people and the products are made available with the help of NGOs who work with schools for mid-day meal and Anganwadi centers.  Plan is there to come up with several other products. For that we will make an announcement at the right time.  

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