Mumbai Dabbawala.docx

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Mumbai Dabbawala

A dabbawala; also spelled as dabbawallaor dabbawallah; is a person inIndia,mostcommonly inMumbai,who collects freshly cooked food inlunch boxesfrom the residences of

mostly-suburban office workers, delivering it to their respective workplaces and returning the

empty boxes back to the customer's residence by using various modes of transport. "Tiffin"is an

Anglo-Indian word, derived from obsolete English slang "tiffing" (to sip),[1]

for a light lunch orafternoon snack, and sometimes, by extension, for the box it is carried in. For this reason, the

dabbawalas are sometimes called tiffin wallahs.

Contents

1 Etymology and historical rootso 1.1 The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust

2 Supply chaino 2.1 Appearance and codingo 2.2 Uninterrupted services

3 Economic analysiso 3.1 Awards and recognition

4 Six Sigma myth 5 In media 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

Etymology and historical roots

Adabba,or Indian-style tiffin box.

The word "dabbawala" inHindiwhen literally translated, means "one who carries a box".

"Dabba" means a box (usually a cylindrical tin or aluminium container), while "wala" is a suffix,

denoting a doer or holder of the preceding word.[2]

The closest meaning of the dabbawala inEnglish would be the "lunch box delivery man". Though this profession seems to be simple, it is
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actually a highly specialized service in Mumbai which is over a century old and has become

integral to the cultural life of this city.

Indian businesspersons are the maincustomersfor the dabbawalas, increasingly affluent families

employ them instead for lunch delivery to their school-aged children. The service provided

usually consists of delivery of home-made food, or sometimes food ordered from a restaurant,but sometimes it can include cooking.

The Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust

This service originated in 1880. In 1890, Mahadeo Havaji Bachche and Ananth Mandra Reddy

started a lunch delivery service with about a hundred men.[3]

In 1930, he[who?]

informally

attempted to unionize the dabbawallas. Later, a charitable trust was registered in 1956 under thename ofNutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust. The commercial arm of this trust was

registered in 1968 asMumbai Tiffin Box Supplier's Association. The current president of the

association is Raghunath Medge.

Supply chain

A collecting dabbawala on a bicycle

Mumbai is one of the most populated cities on earth with huge flows of traffic. Because of this,

lengthy commutes to workplaces are common, with many workers travelling by train.

Instead of going home for lunch or paying for a meal, many office workers have a cooked meal

sent from their home, or sometimes from a caterer who cooks and delivers the meal in lunch

boxes and then have the empty lunch boxes collected and re-sent the same day. This is usuallydone for a monthly fee of about 450. The meal is cooked in the morning and sent in lunch

boxes carried by dabbawalas, who have a complex association and hierarchy across the city.
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A typical dabbawalalunch.

It was estimated in 2007 that the dabbawala industry was still growing by 5-10%per annum.[5]

The dabbawalas have started to embrace technology, and now allow for delivery requests

throughSMS.[6]

An on-line poll on the web site[which?]

ensures that customer feedback is given

pride of place. The success of the system depends on teamwork and time management. Such is

the dedication and commitment of the barely literate and barefoot delivery men (there are only afew delivery women) who form links in the extensive delivery chain, that there is no system of

documentation at all. A simple colour-coding system doubles as an identification system for the

destination and recipient. There are just three layers of management. Each dabbawala is requiredto contribute a minimum capital in kind, in the form of two bicycles, a wooden crate for the

tiffins, white cottonkurta-pyjamas, and the white trademarkGandhi cap(topi). The return on

capital is ensured by monthly division of the earnings of each unit.

Uninterrupted services

The service is almost always uninterrupted, even on the days of severe weather such as

monsoons.The local dabbawalas and population know each other well, and often form bonds of

trust. Dabbawalas are generally well accustomed to the local areas they cater to, and useshortcuts and other low profile routes to deliver their goods on time. Occasionally, peoplecommunicate between home and work by putting messages inside the boxes; however, with the

rise of instant communication such as SMS and instant messaging, this trend is vanishing. Since

1890, when the dabbawalas formally came into existence, none of them had ever gone on strike

until 2011 when the members decided to head towards Azad Maidan to support Anna Hazare inhis campaign against corruption.

[7]
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Economic analysis

Each dabbawala, regardless of role, is paid about eight thousand rupees per month. Between

175,000 and 200,000 lunch boxes are moved by 4,500 to 5,000 dabbawalas, all with anextremely small nominal fee and with utmost punctuality.

It is frequently claimed that dabbawalasmake less than one mistake in every six million

deliveries.[8]

However, this error rate is conservative as it is estimated from Ragunath Medge, the

president of the Mumbai Tiffinmen's Association in 1998, and is not from a rigorous study.

Medge told Subrata Chakravarty, the lead author of the 'Fast Food' article byForbes[9]

,thatdabbawalasmake a mistake "almost never, maybe once every two months" and this statement

was extrapolated by Subrata Chakravarty to be a rate of "one mistake in 8 million deliveries."[10]

TheBBChas produced a documentary on dabbawalas[citation needed]

andPrince Charlesvisited

them during his visit to India; he had to fit in with their schedule, since their timing was too

precise to permit any flexibility. Charles also invited them to his wedding withCamilla Parker

Bowlesin London on 9 April 2005. Owing to the tremendous publicity, some of the dabbawalaswere invited to give guest lectures in some of the top business schools of India, which is very

unusual. Most remarkably in the eyes of many Westerners, the success of the dabbawala trade

has involved no advanced technology,[11]

except for trains (and as mentioned above, SMSservices for booking).

The New York Timesreported in 2007 that the 125-year-old dabbawala industry continues togrow at a rate of 510% per year.

[5]

Awards and recognition

ISO 9001:2000 certified by theJoint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand[12]

Six Sigma myth

It has been frequently asserted that dabbawalaswere awarded aSix Sigmacertification byForbesmagazine. This is a myth perpetuated by the news media who inferred the accreditation

from the 1998 article inForbes.[9]

In 2007, an explanation was provided by the lead author of the

article, Subrata Chakravarty in a private email correspondence[10]

to Gauri Sanjeev Pathak:

"Forbesnever certified the dabbawalasas being a six-sigma organization. In fact, I never usedthe term at all. As you know, six-sigma is a process, not a statistic. But it is commonly associated

with a statistic of 3.4 errors per million operations, and that is what caused the confusion . I

was impressed by the efficiency and complexity of the process by which some 175,000 tiffin

boxes were sorted, transported, delivered and returned each day by people who were mostly

illiterate and unsophisticated. I asked the head of the organization how often they made amistake. He said almost never, maybe once every two months. Any more than that would be

unforgivable to customers. I did the math, which works out to one mistake in 8 million
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deliveriesor 16 million, since the tiffin carriers are returned home each day. That is the statistic

I used.

Apparently, at a conference in 2002, a reporter asked the president whether the tiffinwallahs

were a six-sigma organization. He said he didn't know what that was. When told about the 3.4

error-per-million statistic, I'm told he said: "Then we are. Just ask Forbes". The reporter,obviously without having read my story, wrote that Forbes had certified the tiffinwallahs as a

six-sigma organization. That phrase was picked up and repeated by other reporters in other

stories and now seems to have become part of the folklore."

In media

On 28 December 2011, the British series, "Top Gear" broadcast the episode "India Special"where Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May travelled to India for a "trade

mission". In Mumbai, they aimed to beat the efficiency of the dabbawala by using a car instead

of a train. The mission failed when Clarkson, in a rush to beat the train, did not take enough

cargo, leaving Hammond to carry Clarkson's load as well as his own. Hammond accidentally lostand subsequently ruined some of his cargo, and May, trying to take a ring road approach to the

station, took a wrong turn and ends up in the countryside.[13]

In 2013 film "The Lunchbox", revolves around a mistaken delivery in dabbawala of Mumbai,

which leads to a relationship between an about to retire, Saajan, also a lonely widower and an

unhappy housewife, Ila as they start exchanging notes through the daily lunchbox.
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