Demand Side of Institutional Cooking In India

We are delighted to invite you to the 4th session of the Talk Series – Phase IV, titled “Demand Side of Institutional Cooking in India”. This session will be conducted virtually and is being organized by the Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) Programme, UK, through its in-country partner Finovista. The discussion aims to explore the demand side of institutional eCooking in India and the kind of strategic planning and support needed through Innovative financing models and subsidies, making the transition financially viable for institutions.

Institutional cooking in India, spanning hotels, temple kitchens, school feeding programmes such as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme, community kitchens like Akshaya Patra, government canteens, hospitals, and Anganwadis, represents a significant segment of energy use for large-scale meal preparation. Despite the growing discourse around clean energy, the adoption of electric cooking across these institutions remains minimal, still relying on traditional fuels—primarily LPG, firewood, and biomass—due to perceived reliability, cost-effectiveness, and operational familiarity. However, these fuels come with long-term environmental, health, and operational costs that are often overlooked.

There is a strong case for transitioning these institutions towards electric cooking, but demand remains largely latent. Currently, eCooking appliances are used mainly for auxiliary tasks such as boiling and reheating. Temple kitchens, Hotels and hospitality institutions, Government-run community kitchens, or Anganwadis, lack the infrastructure, awareness, and access to commercial-grade modern eCooking appliances. These Challenges, along with a lack of reliable electricity supply, further suppress demand. Moreover, current public procurement systems do not encourage innovation or experimentation with new technologies. Additionally, financial models such as PAYC (Pay-As-You-Cook), credit-linked support, or bulk procurement are yet to be leveraged effectively to reduce adoption risk.

Creating demand in this segment is critical for India’s clean cooking roadmap and has the potential to unlock significant health, environmental, and economic benefits. This session, thus, will focus on the need to stimulate demand for electric cooking across institutional kitchens while exploring pathways to raise awareness, strengthen capacity building, suggest financial innovations, and engage with sector-specific stakeholders to enable large-scale ecooking adoption by institutions.

Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) is an eight-year research programme funded by UK Aid (FCDO) and led by Loughborough University. MECS programme researches the socio-economic realities of a transition from polluting fuels to a range of modern fuels. Whilst the research covers several clean fuels, the evidence is pointing to the viability, cost effectiveness, and user satisfaction that energy efficient electric cooking devices provide. The programme works in close collaboration with NGOs, governments, the private sector, academia, policy representatives, and communities across 16 countries to accelerate the shift from biomass to genuinely clean cooking.

In India, the programme was launched in early 2020, and works across the intersections of Policy, Finance, Supply chain and promotion of electric cooking to enable the transition to modern fuels for cooking. It supports India’s emergence as a global hub for manufacturing clean cooking devices for domestic and international markets, aligned with the Atmanirbhar Bharat and Make in India missions, as well as the objectives of the GoElectric and LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) campaigns launched by the Government of India.