| Friday, July 25, 2008

Mr. Rao had woken up at 5 a.m., had worked hard all morning and was about to spend the afternoon interviewing the 10 young ladies waiting outside his office. They wanted to become his new secretary but the pangs of lunchtime hunger were threatening Mr Rao’s concentration…

(Image by babasteve on Flickr.)

Breakfast had been hours ago and the last cup of coffee had long since disappeared. He could march all the way down to the ground floor to one of the nearby restaurants but that would take too long and cost too much.

He could phone McDonald’s to send him a Big Mac (McDonald’s in Western India does that) but that wasn’t going to give him enough energy to last all afternoon either.

Then the Dabbawala arrived and Rao smiled. His wife had sent his midday meal 60km from their home via Mumbai’s century-old lunchbox delivery service.

After 125 years without a single strike, Mumbai’s 5000 or so Dabbawalas make great efforts to get nearly 200,000 lunches to work on time everyday. And they hardly ever make a mistake, which means they’ve become a global business school example to follow.

The word Dabbawala (Dabbawalah, Dabbawallah or Dabbawalla, depending on which article you read) is a composite of Dabba (lunch box) wala (person) which means something like ‘lunch box delivery man‘.They’re also called Tiffinwala – tiffin is an old fashioned English word for lunch.

The Dabbawalas are successful because they put their customers first, offer a quality service and charge a decent price. Although most of them are illiterate, they are committed and trustworthy, charge less than 5 USD / month for their lunch delivery service and they even apparently pass marriage offers and business propositions down the Tiffinwala communication lines.

They also seem to attract the right types: becoming a Dabbawala is not easy. First, you must come from the Varkari tradition. Then you get a six-month probation period, must be proficient in Hindi and be physically fit in order to cycle long distances.

The Dabbawalas have a Six Sigma quality certificate and a global business fan club that includes Prince Charles and Richard Branson. Typically perhaps, Prince Charles politely declined to wear the Ghandi hat given to him as a gift and Richard Branson made the most of the opportunity by getting dressed up for some photos.

A coloured tin system is the key to picking-up and delivering 200,000 lunches a day and the quickest method of getting round Mumbai is on the local train system which is quicker than driving.

(Image by darmesh84 on Flickr.)

Dabbawala Links

1. Official Website Of Dabbawala
2. Official Website Of Dabbawala – The Smart Manager
3. Wikipedia – Dabbawala
4. In India, Grandma Cooks, They Deliver – New York Times
5. Management trends | The cult of the dabbawala | Economist.com
6. Prince meets Mumbai’s dabbawallahs
7. Bombay Dabbawalas go high-tech
8. BBC NEWS | Business | India’s tiffinwalas fuel economy
9. Food for thought from Dabbawalas – The Hindu
10. The Hindu Business Line : Dabbawala model — a unique Mumbai phenemenon