Ask HN: Validate a Product Idea for a Social Cause

[MotwaniSuhas]

The last week was exceptional for me, I took up the 7 day, 7 pay-it-forward tasks challenge and have shared my experience here - https://medium.com/@YourProductGuy/the-joy-of-giving-da976e9b7a13

Now, I want to take this a step further:

How about a uber-type model (though not on-demand to start with) where we can connect A to B, ie. those in need of food to places where there is excess?

What do you'll think about this? What might be the challenges?

Malnutrition is a huge problem in countries like mine (India) and I think this will be a step in trying to solve this problem. Did an offline validation with 3 cafes here and it seemed to work. Want to try reaching out to more now and need help building with a website for credibility and put out testimonials as well as reach out to volunteers, organisations and raise funds.

Non-techie here, so anyone got a weekend to spare?

Thanks again :)

[ian0]

In Indonesia we have Gojek, who offer a courier service thats extremely cheap. Ive seen it used to distribute portions of home-cooked meals to relatives.

P2P is extremely difficult due to quality control issues though. Imagine a food poisoning case. Id hazard that its close to impossible to test food effectively en-route while keeping costs low.

What is maybe possible is to partner with existing food stalls and have them sign up to a plan/brand that says they will distribute leftovers or charitable meals.

Each evening these merchants specify what meals they have to donate. These then appear in an app accessible by vetted low income users. You don't need strict quality control as they are already established outlets (even if stalls).

An MVP of this would be to sign up some stalls, give them a nice logo that says they help with the hunger problem. Then call them each eve and ask if they have leftovers. If they do, send an on-demand driver to pick them up and route to nearest the shelter / church / mosque etc who can help distribute to those who need.

= PS For a developed market version I spotted this on the front page a little while go - seems to be a few like it:

https://www.gocopia.com/

[MotwaniSuhas]

Thanks so much for that roadmap, sounds viable. And I completely understand, quality control seems to be the biggest challenge.

GoCopia is exactly what we want to do here, thanks so much for sharing :)

[cimmanom]

There’s an organization in New York called City Harvest. They collect extra food from restaurants, supermarkets, regional farmers, and distributors. And they distribute it to soup kitchens, food pantries, and special markets for the poor. They rescue over 50 million pounds of food every year that would otherwise be wasted.

I’m sure there are both major similarities and differences with how things might work in India. You might want to reach out to them for information about how they operate.

This is a lovely idea. Good luck!

[MotwaniSuhas]

Thanks so much for sharing! Checking them out! And yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to do here :)