The Dabbawala,
(one who carries the box), in the Indian city of Mumbai carry and deliver
freshly made food from customer’s home in a lunch box (Dabba) and deliver it to
offices. It may sound simple, but
it’s not. It is actually a highly specialized trade that
has evolved in its current form over a century and has become integral to
Mumbai’s culture.
It all started about 125 years back when a Parasi
banker wanted to have home cooked food regularly in office and gave this
responsibility to the first ever Dabbawala. Other people also liked the idea
and the demand for Dabba delivery soared.
It was all informal and individual effort in the
beginning, but visionary Mahadeo Havaji Bachche saw the opportunity and started
the lunch delivery service in its present team-delivery format with 100
Dabbawalas. As the city grew, the demand for dabba delivery grew too. Their forefathers
had the vision to create the Dabba coding system that’s going on strong even
today.
The Coding system evolved through various stages with
time. In the beginning it was simple colour coding. Now Mumbai is a widely
spread metro with 3 local train routes. Their coding has also evolved into
alpha numeric characters.
There about 5000 in number and deliver approximately
200,000 tiffin boxes every day. They
operate @ six sigma efficiency. Their error rate is one in 16million
deliveries. They are 125 years old. Never have gone on strike and no police /
court case against them. They earn a maximum
of Rs.15,000/- per month (annualized basis) and their attrition is zero
%. A dream for any HR person or for any CEO’s that matter.
We had invited Dr Pawan Girdharilal Agrawal, CEO of the Mumbai Dabbawala
Association to
address the Schneiderites as part of our Leadership Series and it was another
memorable occassion for all us. He really inspired the 400+ audience and made
us sit up and reflect.
I was
fortunate to spend some time with him at our office in Whitefield, Bangalore.
A man who globe trots around the world, delivering his lecture on the
Mumbai Dabbawala experience, who's interacted with Prince Charles, Dr. Manmohan
Singh, Richard Bronson of Virgin Atlantic, Amitabh, Sharukh Khan and all
corporate honchos was so simple, very humble, down to earth and was so
refreshing to see such a celbrity. He readily mingled with all and patiently
posed for photographs with each one of them. The icing on the cake was when he
gave away his trade mark Gandhi cap and a tiffin box memento. I was fortunate
to be one of them to recieve this and surely will treasure this for long time
to come.
It was
truly another memorable day that I will cherish for long time to come.
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