Ré conducted its fourth episode of the most successful Coffee table talk series at Kore. We were excited to meet Mr.Padmanaban Gopalan. However, he was unable to attend, yet his associates Mr.Hari and Mr.Sarjith were present. They both represented the “No food waste” organization. It was a great experience witnessing two of the consummate personalities in the field of social entrepreneurship, elaborating on their experience.

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They started the oratory by speaking about Mr. Padmanaban. They emphasized on what sparked flame in the mind of Mr. Padmanaban to take up the idea of “No food waste”. They said that a second grade student first asked him about the amount of food wasted in public ceremonies like marriages. The kid asked in a juvenile way as in what he should do if the server serves inordinate food on his freshly spread banana leaf. Padmanaban thought about it and there sparked the idea for him to start this organization. He certainly obtained help and support from his friends. Amazingly, he had given his own phone number as helpline.

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Mr. Hari then explained about the difficulties in the process of initiating a start-up and he remarked on how they had to apply their engineering skills to document the whole process for a wholesome betterment. He then explained the importance of writing things down to have clarity of mind. He mentioned regarding the reality of the world faced by engineers. He explained how family and friends would patronize us in this process.

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Mr.Hari also explained the functioning of entrepreneurs. He emphasized on the prominence of entrepreneurship’s support to people to stomp their unique mark in the market. In order to make such a move, one must find their own self amidst various distractions and this will eventually improvise the decision-making skills of a person.

The joy of entrepreneurship is meticulously fulfilling but the happiness acquired through social entrepreneurship is incomparable. The consistent search for food is relentless. Moreover, the joy that food brings people is unquestionably a wonder. Mr. Hari went on to speak about the innumerous qualities of being a better server to the society. He depicts the rejoicing faces of people on the receiving end. “Wasting food is a definite no-no to his clan now”, he says with a smile. It is always better to buy food in required proportions rather than buying food in large proportions and eventually wasting them in the process. They started explaining on how they would distribute food waste amongst people, with minimum or no space for wastage whatsoever.

“Volunteers are of huge support to our brand”, they say with an open-minded smile. The volunteering peers most probably fulfill any sort of help that they would want to receive. These selfless people aid in finding any kind of equipment necessary for their work. Mr. Hari says how social media plays a pivotal role in their campaign for without it, they would not be able to help people at all.

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Most of the volunteers and help received by them were through social media. He explained how social media is effective for marketing. They also went on to explain about other projects done by their organization such as (no dump), that attempts in building toilets and preventing people from dumping in public. For this project, they had even furnished internship opportunities to enthusiastic civil engineering students. He remarks on the prominence of comprehending almost all the fields to develop a better perception of the world that surrounds us every day.

He explained about (Roadside Romeos) which happens to be one of their projects as well, and that it produces short movies, covers, movies, and songs. This project is on the process of producing a movie soon. He showed a video of their performance in Vijay TV, where they perform a song about Oviya in front of Oviya herself. He also showed a video about the need for food and as he said, “photo illustrates everything better”.

They ended their notes, by highlighting on the indispensability of embracing one’s true self to reach for higher goals. “It is also important to do wise work with persistence when it comes to entrepreneurship”, they said. The coffee table talk ended up churning creative juices out of young aspiring minds.