Dabbawalas

Background
Dabbawalla is a ‘home-office’ food delivery system that holds a six-sigma certification for
their timely and errorless deliveries for the past 120+ years in one of the buzzling cities of
India, Mumbai. The ‘Dabbawallas’ is the brain child of Mahadev Haji Bache, one of the
original deliverymen who found a business scope when a banker in Mumbai hired a person to
bring home cooked food to his office and take it back during the early 1800’s. With 35 farmers
from a city near Pune of the Varkari community he began this delivery system ‘Dabbawalas’
and later this grew into a massive organization consisting of 5000 employees, mostly illiterates
who are paid on a monthly basis. The daily schedule of the dabbawallas include collecting
lunch boxes from customer’s home and handing it over in their office, collect it and return it
back home. Their mode of commute are bicycles, handcarts and trains. To top all this, this daily
shuttling of carrying various lunch boxes to different parts of the city happened in the absence
of technology.
Motto and Core Values
The dabbawalas work on a common motto that the customers are God and their core values
include serving them on time without any excuses. They also believe that giving food is the
greatest form of charity. They drew their inspiration from the Maratha king Chhatrapati Sivaji,
as they are the natives of a village who are primarily the decedents of tribal warriors who fought
in the King’s army. They believe - as their ancestors fought against their rivalry, these people
‘fight against time’
Subliminal Advertisment
The dabbawalas attire – white Gandhi caps, their bicycles and handcarts were significant to
their organization and acted as a subliminal advertisement. Their initial customers were through
word of mouth. And as they were recognized for their timely delivery a lot of customers started
pitching in. Mumbai is a city of diverse culture and people preferred eating home cooked foods.
Owing to the heavy traffic and rush during the morning hours, the office goers preferred
dabbawalas as a better option.
Organization Structure
The dabbawalas are grouped, having about 25 members each headed by a supervisor – called
muqaddams, who carries dabbas as well oversees the conflicts, coding, sorting process and the
monthly payment to the members. There are about 653 muqaddams. The organization as a
whole is maintained by two committee namely the Operational committee and the Charitable
trust. Both the committees have a president, General Secretary, Treasurer and a Director. The
Operational Committee looks after the logistics part of the Dabbawalas and the muqaddams
along with their group come under them whereas the Charitable trust saves up donations and
money from its members to maintain the lodging houses and help the employees during an
emergency (given as insurance). Elections take place in which muqaddams can participate to
become a part of either of the committees.
Recruitment Process
The recruitment process is simple in dabbawallas. The new entrants are friends and relatives
of the already existing employees. The freshers have a probation period of 6 months after which
they have to invest some amount to become a permanent member. Illiterates are preferred,
since they believe commitment matters than qualification which is not seen in the educated.
Warnings are given for misbehaviour and if it continues, they are withdrawn from their job.
Fines are imposed if found drunk during working hours or not wearing the cap.
Standard Operating Procedure
The routine of a dabbawalla on a regular day is as follows:
• Report at work by 9 A.M
• Pick up dabbas from the houses (1 hr)
• Sorting of dabbas based on train destinations (30 mins)
• Boarding train (15 mins)
• Train journey (45 mins)
• Sorts again based on office destinations (30 mins)
• Delivery to office (1 hr)
• Collect the lunch boxes (1 hr)
• Sort based on the station (10 mins)
• Train journey (30 mins)
• Sort based on residence (30 mins)
• Return dabbas to home (1 hr)
This is how dabbawalas operate on a regular day. Each dabbawalla collects 30-40 dabbas daily.
For each of the operation mentioned above they have a buffer timing to compensate in case of
any mishaps. In-between the hustle they are given a half an hour break for lunch and rest. Their
work gets over by 5 P.M in the evening after which they get to spend time with their family.
Finances
Based on the distance between home and office, each dabbawalla has the freedom to negotiate
the monthly charges to a customer within the guidelines provided. At the end of a month the
profit is divided to all the members in the group. On an average each dabbawalla earns Rs.7000
per month after being deducted for various expenses like train pass, luggage pass, bicycle
maintenance, miscellaneous costs and for the trust.
Coding Sysytem
The coding method of dabbawallas is one of the reasons why the system is a huge hit owing to
an almost nil error rate. Since all the dabbawalas are illiterates, they use universal symbols like
alphabets and numbers as codes for identification. The codes consist: the destination station
(depicted by a number), code of dabbawalla who is in charge (depicted in codes specific to
each dabbawalla), code of destination (name of the building), Floor number, Name of the
customer, coloured lines at the bottom (indicating originating stations). With all these
identification codes the dabbas are collected and delivered at the exact locations without any
confusions.

Stakeholders
The Stakeholders of this organization has a major role in their success. The following are
dabbawallas stakeholders: the homecooks – who keep the lunch boxes ready at perfect time
without any delay, the public – who allow them to use their space to ride through (their areas,
streets or sometimes their compounds), the traffic police- who does not stop them at signals,
the co-passengers- who allow the dabbawalas to board trains even during rush hours and the
employees itself who coordinate and take up role during absentees. All these people act as a
factor for the dabbawallas to reach their destinations at perfect timings.
Critical Success Factors
Their efficiency in operation and a smooth supply chain management account for the success
factor of the Dabbawalas. This efficiency and success are compared to that of Toyota’s. The
principles of Toyota production system accounts for its supremacy in the automobile market.
The following principles are common between the two organization.
 1. The concept of eliminating Muda(waste), Mura(unevenness), Muri(overburden) is the
primary task. When these obstacles are eliminated are reduced the efficiency is
improved.
• Muda refers to elimination of waste. Overproduction, defects, transport – movement of
product, motion – excess movement of people are all considered as waste. The
dabbawallas does not overproduce nor have defects. The transport and motion are
minimal since all the dabbawallas are very much familiar with the geography to
navigate through the city and also familiar with the customers, and hence no extra
movement takes place.
• Mura is the unevenness or irregularity. Each dabbawalla carries equal number of
dabbas, and their work is equally distributed. This avoids conflicts among them. They
do not take offs often; Since all of them belong to a same community, they are provided
with a commom festive holidays and this avoids taking frequent offs. Their regularity
reduces mistakes caused due to not unfamiliarity with locations.
• Muri is overburden, the dabbawals are not burdened with too much workload, they
follow a work distribution such that it is not a burden.
2. Respect for people – the dabbawallas have a regular talk with their customers to get
their feedbacks. This customer relationship has helped them gain their customers trust,
which is very much needed for publicising any organization.
3. Teamwork – is yet another principle of Toyota. A good fellowship and bond are very
much needed in order to avoid conflicts and run smoothly. In spite of lack of
technology, the dabbawallas do a very good teamwork.
Challenges Ahead
Swiggy and Zomato are recently launched services that deliver food to home. They are the new
entries to the market yet people accepted them quickly since they delivered foods from people’s
favourite hotels and restaurants at the comfort of their home. Comparing swiggy and Zomato
with dabbawalas, the later had a good customer relationship; asking for feedbacks, and
rectifying anything that was raised as a complain. The dabbawalas were familiar with the
directions, making it easy for them to find the quickest routes to their respective destination
unlike the other ones who rely on maps for directions. The dabbawalas workload was doable
without burden unlike employees at swiggy and Zomato who have to run for long hours. Even
on the absence of technology, the dabbawalas had no errors in delivering the boxes at their
respective destinations unlike swiggy and Zomato even with technology confuse parcels and
destinations.
During Covid-19
Even the fierce storms and floods in Mumbai couldn’t stop the work of dabbawalas but
unfortunately the Pandemic, COVID – 19 was a very big blow to the dabbawalas. A lot of them
lost their employment due to restrictions imposed by the government, Work from home and
lockdowns. The dabbawalas returned to their village going back to farming, some became
drivers and security guards. It was a hit only for the dabbawalas, unlike swiggy and Zomato
who were able to navigate through the situation because of technologies and ‘hotel-cooked’
foods. The dabbawalas found it difficult because of their ‘non-techy’ brains and were not able
to adapt.
Future Plans
An organization that made people to look upon for their unerring service was blown down by
the pandemic. the organization should consider partnering with restaurants for food delivery
since most of the offices have chosen WFH option at least for now. They can also consider
partnering with online shops like amazon to deliver products. The dabbawalas can learn to use
the basic technology that will help them work in other organizations. Another option they could
try doing is cloud kitchen, not every time people will prefer to have hotel foods, a kitchen
where home like foods can be prepared and delivered to people. The dabbawals have a created
a limelight in the Mumbai city, and they should try their best to keep up their legacy in the
years that to come.

References:
• (2021, July 23). How Zomato, Swiggy’s hunger has taken meals off Mumbai

dabbawalas plate. Mint. https://www.livemint.com/news/india/how-zomato-swiggy-s-

hunger-has-taken-meals-off-mumbai-dabbawalas-plate-11627006849536.html

• Toyota Production System – Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma Definitions

https://www.leansixsigmadefinition.com/glossary/toyota-production-system/