The Dabbawala

System- On-Time
Delivery, Every
Time

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  A sense of community among dabbawalas: There is a sense of community among
the dabbawalas who are within the age group 18-65 due to the fact they tend to
Question 1. stay in their respective group for long period of time. The familiarity, bonds, and
psychological safety lead to lower error rates.
How does the  Recruitment Policies and Penalty: The new recruits are usually friends, relatives
dabbawala of existing employees. Since most of the recruits are from villages around Pune
organization most dabbawalas have the same culture, language, values, work ethic, diet, and
religious beliefs. Dabbawalas need to strictly follow the uniform while on work
achieve its high which make them easy to identify. There is a probation period of 6 months and
non-performers were given one or two chances and replaced
service  Low operating costs: Low operation costs is one of the most important success
performance? factor. There is very low use of modern technologies and they run day to day
operations based on solely manpower. The use of public transport system such as
What is its Mumbai local train for deliveries further keeps the cost low.
secret for  Lower pricing: Due to low operating cost the price charged to customers is far

success? 
lower compared to other courier services.
Hub and spoke model used by dabbawalas enable them to work as team
 The dabbawalas are recognized as an example of excellence in service delivery and
there is positive of mouth about its service.

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 The 125-year-old Dabbawalas were recognized at the Six Sigma level by Forbes in 2002.

Question 2. Why Dabbawalas use a complex system of collection teams, sorting points and delivery
zones and a manual system for routing the right dabba to the right destination. Every

do world class day 175000 lunches delivered by 4000 to 5000 dabbawalas.

companies like Some of the lesson to learn from Dabbawalas are:

FedEx study the  Error rate in the delivery is estimated to be one in six million. Despite its incredible
efficiency, there is a very low-tech system (minimal use web technology and SMS
Dabbawala order at present) and delivery man relies on barefoot, bicycle and train. There is no
social network, no phones to track. Technology is not supposed to solve problems
system? What of organizations, rather it act as enabler.
 They keeps record on the sum and not the individual parts. Instead of focusing too
do they expect much on individual parts organizations need to look at the overall picture.

to learn?  There is simplicity associated with working of system of dabbawalas. They are
aware of the customer need (on time food delivery) they focus 100% of their time
and energy on meeting that need. Companies should focus on meeting the core
need of customers.

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  There have been several instances where many consultants and organizations have
tried to modernize the dabbawalas but not much success was achieved as they are
very hesitant in embracing technology.
Question 3. A  Most of the dabbawalas have very basic formal education and implementing any new
consultant wants technology in their operations for them is a uphill task. This is also reflected in their
125-year-old service.
to move the  They still like to be attached to basic equipment such as bicycles and handcarts.
dabbawala  Even if the consultant might talk about training them and giving them a hands-on
system into the experience of any new technology before they rope it in but still, we think it would
twenty-first be very risky measure as the accuracy that they have now is at its level best.

century and  There is a high risk of losing their credibility if things doesn’t go well with their
community.
proposes several  Another reason because of which they refrain from modernization is that the even
changes. How with their not so high-income level, they have immense job satisfaction. They are
should Raghunath very deeply attached to their jobs and have no complaints about it even with high
manual labor and low-income level.
Medge respond?  A suggestion for this rapidly digitalizing world would be the adoption of IT services
to enable online order booking and inquiry systems but by appointing a separate IT
division where technically apt people would be employed which would only deal
with online channel orders and inquiries and help the organization through new
customer acquisitions and service innovation.

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