Citi distributes more than 850 tons of monthly supplies to Low-income families nationally

Citi announced it distributed over 250 tons to 7,714 low-income families in Chennai through the bank’s first personalized charitable-giving program in India, or globally. Via the Citi-designed program, You Nominate. We Donate., Citi employees were asked to share the names of up to two families who they would like to supply rations to. Then, a month's worth of food rations and cleaning supplies were distributed to the doorsteps of the nominated families.

 

In total, more than 850 tons of monthly supplies were distributed to Citi-nominated families across Bengaluru, Chennai, and Hyderabad, in the south of India, through Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Faridabad, and Ghaziabad, in the north, in Mumbai and Pune in the west, and around Kolkata in the east.

 

Customizing to local tastes of Chennai-based families, each package consisted of 15 kg sona steam rice and 5 kg PL idli rice. The families also received 5kg pulses, 1 kg salt and 2 kg sugar, coffee, toothpaste, bathing soap, feminine hygiene products and clothes washing soap. A bottle of floor cleaner and 3 liters of cooking oil was also included. Every bag, weighing 33 kgs, carried the message in the Citi ‘blue’ in English and Tamil: This is a small token of our appreciation for all that you do for us. Thank you. To distribute the rations that benefited between 30,856 and 38,570 individuals, 291 trucks were utilized in Chennai.

Citi South Asia Head for Global Public Affairs Debasis Ghosh said, “Citi employees wanted to be of assistance to the greater community; this program gave them an opportunity to nominate families whose ability to earn was severely impacted. The program, designed to give a voice to our employees during these unprecedented times, was extremely well-received by all stakeholders. Encouraged with the strong participation, we are evaluating to further the program with our partners and the Government, based on current needs and on-ground realities.”

Citi employees nominated their part-time household help, drivers, watchmen, and those who assisted with their ironing and laundry in the neighborhood. Sanitation workers, repairmen, food delivery boys, tailors, electricians, migrant workers and part-time domestic help, were amongst those who made up the extensive nominee list nationally. The funds allocated to this program were part of Citi’s overall INR 75 crore CSR commitment towards COVID-19 immediate-to-long term programs.

As the aim was to ensure 100% deliveries, employees also kept in touch with their nominees as part of this program, raising engagement. Besides, a combined 200,000+ calls by the virtual call center set up for the task were made in Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu, besides Hindi and English, to verify details at the start of the program and at the time of door-step delivery. High quality, household brand names were selected too: Tata, ITC, Godrej, Unilever, Colgate, Fortune, and Parry’s, amongst others. The nutritional value of the ration was certified by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad. 

At the time of delivery, a mobile app, specially created for this program tracked all door-step deliveries, providing accountability. The app stored all pre-checked/confirmed addresses, landmarks, and phone numbers, of nominees. To promote social distancing, ground support was able to use the app to take a picture of the family member receiving the rations. These ‘photo acceptances’ were uploaded over the app and into the backend database to track deliveries and account for each package.

Nominees were located across 16 cities from employees based in 30 locations nationally. The cities were divided into 35 clusters that were split further to give each truck a fixed single-route to deliver up to an average of about 23 packages each. Over 90 days, 1,028 trucks travelled 100,000 km nationally to deliver over 850 tons of rations to 26,000 families of up to five, enabling them to have 7.8 million meals over a period of 30 days.