India's lessons in a lunch box
By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Mumbai's dabbawallahs (lunch-box carriers), who depend on
traditional methods for running their business, are now looking to high tech
for expanding their market. They have set up their own website and a
text-messaging system to win new orders.
The Dabbawallah Association of Mumbai consists of about 5,000 men who deliver
hot, home-cooked meals to Mumbaikars - as residents of Mumbai are known - at
their workplaces and return
empty lunch boxes to their homes the same evening. For this, they charge
US$6-7, per lunchbox, per month.
Simple task, it seems.
Not so simple when one considers the fact that they deliver about 200,000
lunches on time, every day, with clockwork precision, across long distances and
after battling Mumbai's chaotic traffic.
The operation begins with a dabbawallah picking up lunch boxes at about
9:30am from the clients' residences. From there, the boxes go through a series
of transport systems - on the dabbawallah's head, in crates, on bicycles
and in suburban trains - and pass through multiple hands before reaching the
customers' office table.
At about 2:30pm the dabbawallahs return to the clients' office tables,
pick up the empty lunch boxes and return them to their homes through the same
transport system they used earlier in the day.
Their delivery is almost error-free. The mistake rate of Mumbai's dabbawallahs
is said to be just one in 16 million deliveries. After studying their
operations, Forbes magazine in 2001 awarded the dabbawallahs a "Six
Sigma" performance rating, on par with global giants General Electric and
Motorola. The dabbawallahs, Forbes magazine said, work with 99.999999%
accuracy.
How do they ensure that the right meal reaches the right person on time, every
time? A coding system that consists of colors, letters and numbers identifies
the place of origin of the lunchbox and indicates the destination railway
station, the building, floor and office where the box has to be delivered.
"We function like courier companies," pointed out Raghunath Medge, president of
the Dabbawallah Association - and, he might have added, without the help of
computers or databases, at a fraction of the cost and many times more
efficiently.
"A single dabbawallah not showing up at work or dawdling while on duty
can disrupt the system. Discipline is strictly enforced," Medge said.
Absenteeism without valid reason is not tolerated. Consuming alcohol while on
duty attracts a fine of Rs1,000 ($22). If a dabbawallah violates this
rule twice, his contract is terminated.
The dabbawallahs are not employees; they are stakeholders in the
organization and share the earnings equally among themselves. "If you have
employees, then you have unions and strikes," pointed out Medge.
Meeting deadlines is crucial in the business. Delivery of food is never
delayed, not when the monsoons strike Mumbai, not even when a prince drops in
to see them. In 2003, Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, wanted to
meet up with Mumbai's dabbawallahs while on a nine-day visit to India.
The Dabbawallah Association requested he schedule the meeting so that it would
not disrupt the midday delivery deadlines. The prince fell in line.
Mumbai's suburban train network is the backbone of the dabbawallah business.
If it were not for the efficient and inexpensive suburban trains, the reach of
the dabbawallahs would be limited. A dabbawallah traveling on a
bicycle can cover a radius of only 2-3 kilometers; the trains enable them to
cover longer distances and in less time. The absence of a similar suburban
train network has, in fact, stood in the way of the Mumbai dabbawallahs replicating
their business in other Indian cities.
Most dabbawallahs have had little formal education. Yet thanks to their
impeccable logistics and supply-chain management, they now are imparting
business skills to the captains of Indian industry. The dabbawallahs' logistics
system is a case study that students of business management in the world's top
business schools analyze.
But the dabbawallah business has faced several challenges since its
inception back in 1890. Food habits, the market and the work environment have
changed dramatically. Several companies provide subsidized food in canteens,
fast-food restaurants have sprung up all over Mumbai, and with the closure of
scores of textile mills in Mumbai the dabbawallahs have been denied
thousands of customers.
Medge admits that the market is leveling out. And few want to become dabbawallahs,
as wages are low. The number of dabbawallahs has not grown for a decade;
the average age of a dabbawallah is said to be around 55, as few
youngsters are willing to join the business. Some believe that the dabbawallah
as an institution is dying and might be extinct in 15 years.
Survival has prompted the Dabbawallah Association to reinvent itself. It is
looking to technology not to improve operations - it does not need this given
its high level of accuracy and efficiency - but to draw new clientele and to
expand business. And this is where a website comes in. Now office workers keen
to have hot, home-cooked meals delivered at their workplace need simply to
text-message or e-mail to be served.
The association is also using the website to market other merchandise - coffee
mugs, T-shirts and so on.
Over the past couple of years, the Dabbawallah Association has been leveraging
its reach to some 200,000 households to attract advertisements. Such
corporations as Hindustan Lever, Star TV and Colgate have used the services of
the dabbawallahs to advertise their products. Radio Mirchi, an FM radio
station, advertised its program Hello Mumbai by distributing a dried red mirchi
(chilli) with each lunchbox.
The environment in which they are having to do business might be changing
rapidly and becoming more challenging every day, but clearly the dabbawallahs
are not about to give up.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
