We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Viraja Shivhare, Janani Janakiraman, Arushi Shah, Aanya Ramaswamy. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Viraja Shivhare, Janani Janakiraman, Arushi Shah, Aanya Ramaswamy below.
Viraja Shivhare, Janani Janakiraman, Arushi Shah, Aanya Ramaswamy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with talking about how you serve the underserved, because in our view this is one of the most important things the small business community does for society – by serving those who the giant corporations ignore, small business helps create a more inclusive and just world for all of us.
Growing up, we each faced our own battles with nutrition, some of us with anemia, others watching our families struggle with generational diabetes and the long-term effects of malnutrition. We’ve seen how poor nutrition doesn’t just harm individual health; it undermines academic performance, limits opportunities, and weakens community engagement. These struggles were often tied to a cultural shift that stripped away essential nutrients like protein and iron, replacing them with food high in fats and calories. In many of our homes, heart-healthy ingredients like extra virgin olive oil were replaced with cheaper alternatives like palm oil, not by choice, but by necessity. It created a cycle of poor health that was nearly impossible to escape. As we began researching this issue further, we found that what we experienced was part of a much larger problem. In low-income communities across the country, families face even greater barriers to accessing healthy food. While millions receive food assistance, the meals provided are often nutritionally inadequate and culturally irrelevant. Emergency food systems rely heavily on processed, calorie-dense products because they’re cheap and shelf-stable while healthier alternatives remain financially out of reach and logistically difficult to distribute. This isn’t just a matter of hunger; it’s a matter of dignity. The current system often overlooks cultural preferences and dietary needs, leading to food that doesn’t nourish, doesn’t comfort, and doesn’t connect. It fails to build trust and falls short of creating lasting change. That’s why we’re committed to designing a new kind of food aid, one that prioritizes health through fortified, nutritious meals and honors the cultural identities of the communities it serves. No child should have to grow up facing the same nutritional struggles we did. And no community should be denied the right to food that is both nourishing and familiar. We’re working toward a future where healthy, culturally relevant meals are not a luxury, but a standard, accessible to all.
Viraja Shivhare, Janani Janakiraman, Arushi Shah, Aanya Ramaswamy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Food is fuel and thus came Fuel The World. Our nonprofit reimagines how food aid is delivered underserved communities. Rather than solely focusing on quantity, we focus on providing quality, fortified, nutrition-dense meals that are also culturally relevant. To scale this impact, we run two major initiatives: NourishNet and Nutrition Literacy Workshops. For NourishNet, we design meal kits that fill critical nutrient gaps, such as iron, protein, and vitamins, for at-risk population. We tailor our kits based on the needs of each population, while also ensuring that the ingredients reflect cultural flavors and are ingredients people actually want to eat. By merging health with cultural familiarity, we hope to increase nutritional outcomes while also dignifying the people we serve. For our Nutrition Literacy Workshops, we hope to empower families with knowledge about healthy cooking and food choices, ensuring change lasts beyond the plate. Volunteers craft the material for these workshops based on the needs of local communities and then host them at local libraries, schools, clubhouses, and cultural centers. At the end of these workshops, we hand out nutrition packets that are also in our meal kit (GoodMonk nutritious premix – small tasteless, powdered packages that you can pour in drinks or over food which allows communities to continue to eat and taste the food they love but also absorb twice the amount of nutrients in each meal).
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
One of the best ways we’ve been able to build our reputation in our community is by forming partnerships with reputable companies. Our partnerships started with local homeless shelters such as CityTeam and LifeMoves and expanded to extremely popular brands such as Jamba Juice, Hershey Co., Shake Shack, and even Panera! Our long list of successful partnerships and events has been vital in building our reputation. It’s not only opened doors to newer partnerships, it’s also boosted our popularity in the media.
Any advice for managing a team?
Set smaller goals for your team, like stepping stones, that lead up to the big goal! Often, a huge daunting goal that seems to take forever to achieve can reduce morale. When we first created our organization, our major goal was to raise at least 10K within a year. Throughout that year, we set smaller goals, such as hosting our first cash fundraiser, our first in-kind donations fundraiser, donating resources to India, opening at least 10 chapters that hold at least one event a month, and more! After achieving these smaller goals one within a, we’ve not only achieved our goal of raising $10K, but we’ve exceeded it, surpassing $15K.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://fueltheworldinc.wixsite.com/fueltheworld
- Instagram: @fueltheworldinc
