The Great Journey of Dabbawalas

It all started out approximately 125 years ago when a banker wanted to have home cooked food often in office and gave this responsibility to the Dabbawala. Other people in the offices also favored the concept and the requirement for the Dabbawala increased. At first, it was the casual and one person attempt, however creative Mahadeo Havaji noticed the opportunity and started out the lunch delivery service as a business in a group-delivery format with more than 100 Dabbawalas. In 1890’s Bombay, Mahadeo Bhavaji commenced a lunch delivery service with approximately with hundred people. In 1930’s, he informally tried to put together the dabbawallas as a team. Later, as the population grew, the demand for dabba delivery grew too. The current president of the association is Raghunath Medge. In 1990’s, Forbes international magazine conducted an evaluation and gave them a Six Sigma rating of efficiency.

The journey of Dabbawalas has been a attractive one, wherein they've proved their determination over and over, each day, battling the traffic and crowds of Mumbai’s huge city, the Dabbawalas, unfailingly brought thousands of dabbas to hungry persons in offices and later returned the empty dabbas to where they got them from. The Dabbawalas added either home-cooked meal from clients’ houses or lunches ordered for a monthly price, from women who cook at their homes according to the clients’ specifications. The Dabbawalas’ provider was utilized by both official persons and school kids. In 1998, Forbes worldwide magazine, carried out an evaluation and observe the Dabbawalas’ operations and gave it a Six Sigma efficiency score, the Dabbawalas made only one mistake out of six million transactions, that placed them on the list of Six Sigma rated agencies. Getting this rating and that too without the use of any technology or office work, in which most of the employees have been illiterate is certainly has been an amazing development. Other than Forbes, the Dabbawalas have aroused the interest of many other global businesses, internet and academia. They have excellently survived the threats from today’s business environment and achieved the popularity and getting their operations completed very well.

The Dabbawala’s, generally on bicycle, collects Dabba’s both from a employee’s houses or from the dabba makers. As most of the carriers are of constrained literacy, the Dabba’s have a few sort of distinguishing mark on them, consisting of a coloration or organization of symbols. Lunch Tiffin’s or Dabba’s are usually marked in numerous ways e.g. abbreviations for collection factors, coloration code for starting station, address for destination station and markings for dealing with Dabbawala at destination, constructing and floor. The Dabbawala then takes them to a delegated sorting place, where he and different gathered Dabbawala’s sort the Dabba’s into different types of group depending upon their different destination areas. The grouped packing containers are positioned inside the coaches of trains, with markings to pick out the box according to its destination. The coding encompasses the railway station to unload the boxes into their desired destination. At every station, Dabba’s are passed over to a neighborhood Dabbawala’s, who can provide them. The empty boxes are accumulated after lunch or day after today and dispatched back to the respective homes.

The service is always uninterrupted, even on the times of excessive climate including monsoons. They are highly motivated to establish an effective customer satisfaction, however they had facing a problem that how they will incorporate the new technology in their organization like to take their orders online e.g. make order online and their respective payments too, this will help them to manage their operations more efficiently and effectively but the website is in English language and their most of the employees and customers does not know English language, this case is about that how they can manage to incorporate the new technology in their organization so that they can increase their customer base and profitability.