‘Buy a plate, fill a plate’ is the mantra followed by The Plated Project, an initiative that joins forces with talented artists to create one-of-kind plates printed with unique and beautiful art. Here, when you buy one of these plates, you help put food on another person’s plate. And with every plate, we together as a society come a little closer to making sure no one sleeps hungry again. Chitresh Sinha, Founder & Chief Ideator of The Plated Project talks about the soul, vision, and mission of the initiative.
THE IDEA
It started as a passion project, while I was working at an innovation lab and there we were trying to understand how to use innovation to solve social issues. And that is when hunger as a social issue came up. It is an accepted reality and every city of this country, but the agenda was can we change 
this reality? It’s not about people pouring in money for it, but there is a huge crisis about awareness. It is interconnected with other social issues. Then we decided to do something so that we can raise money to feed people and at the same time make people talk about it as a social issue. According to statistics, 3-5 percent of the Indian population is into donation and charity, and they also expect to get something in return that makes them feel happy and connect about it. That is when art came as an emotional connect and the whole team came up with the idea of ‘Art Against Hunger’, and art on the plate came as a concept to us.
THE PROCESS
It begins with reaching out to an NGO or an NGO reaching out to us. We then look at hunger as the key subject and related issues and then focus on one agenda at a time. Then, work around the idea; 
create a theme for the month, and start approaching artists. Recently, in the month of March, one of the NGOs reached out to us and told us that down-syndrome and autism is a huge issue in the world and in India but not enough people talk about it. So we made that the starting point. Then the team sat down and brainstormed how we can get conversations to start around this. And then we came up with a creative theme Trisomy. Trisomy as a theme was about getting artists to create artwork where each artwork had three repeating visual elements in it. At The Plated Project, it’s a blend of hand-painted and machine production, where after brainstorming the idea artists hand paint the design as per the theme, and then we digitally scan it and mass produce it via digital printing. The prices of plates are standardized, excluding the series where prices are premium. The simple model is that all plates are priced at Rs 2199, and at that price point, we transparently deduct the production cost, then the 25% goes to the artist, 50 % to the charity and, the rest 25 % we retain to run and grow the business.
FIRST PLATED PROJECT
Our first project was called “A Plate Full of Hope”, for which we had collaborated with 9 artists including Reshidev, Kosha Shah, Hana Augustine, Ayirani Balachanthira, and Mohit Adlakha. Each art plate vividly captured a moment from life during the Covid-19 pandemic. Each one talked about a tale of hope that is helping millions get through these difficult times. For each plate sold, we donated 100% of the proceeds to Goonj for a month and sponsored 137,500 meals. This amount sponsors a ration and meal kit consisting of essentials like dal, rice, atta and other essentials that are enough for 60 meals for one worker’s family.
HURDLES
It’s not the art size that is difficult, it’s the logistics and scaling up into B2C business that brings in all the hiccups. The biggest hurdle had been the art of balancing the business model and making sure 
that customers get a pleasant experience and we are able to keep the cost under control. That’s the reason we never indulged in any huge marketing planning. And the most recent hurdle had been because of the pandemic. During wave 1, 500 plates order was stuck in Delhi, as factories were shut, so these operational issues have been quite a time consuming, but I guess it’s a part and parcel of life.
MY FAVOURITES
All of them have been processed with a clear thought process. But the one that will always be close to my heart will be our very first one, ‘A Plate Full of Hope’, it sold out in less than a month. The second one that is personally close to me is the collaboration we did with Marriott International, for preserving traditional art forms in Hong Kong. We stayed there for a year and during our visit, we realized that local artisans were being replaced by technology and cheap production techniques. For this project, we collaborated with designer Suket Dhir and other creative people from other countries. The sale proceedings of the project were used for the hunger-related charities in Hong Kong. I think for us that was really fulfilling.
FUTURE FILE
The central idea will always be the same and going forward we are planning to introduce as many everyday products with a bit of art where the conversation will go around hunger-related issues. We started with decor plates, now we are trying if we can introduce plates in which people can eat too and other unique products where art and hunger will be the heroes and will have an emotional connection to it.
The post Hunger Free India: The Plated Project appeared first on TMM.