What startups can learn from Dabbawalas - Quality as a value.

The celebration of Diwali, or Deepavali, this week, also known as the "Festival of Lights," brings back fond memories of travel, especially in India, where I audited extensively my supply chain, against ISO management system and customer requirements compliance.

The hustle and bustle of India, its entrepreneurial and enterprising spirit of its people, innovation, creativity and robust culture.

That was the first time, I was introduced to Mumbai Dabbawala where it was associated with the food industry via delivery services.

It was started in the year 1890 because of a Parsi banker who wanted to eat hot and homemade food even at his workplace. In the same year, a delivery service of Tiffin was started by Mahadeo Bhavaji Bachche with a workforce of one hundred men. Currently, it offers its services to nearly 150,000 people in metro city Mumbai. Mumbai Dabbawala's mission is to offer 100% customer satisfaction to its clients.

Dabba (which means box or lunchbox) carriers are called, dabbawala. They are delivery men who collect freshly cooked food prepared and stored in lunchboxes from various Indian homes, mostly of suburban office workers, and then delivered to their respective workplaces. Dabbawala would then return the empty boxes back to the customer's house before they even return from work. 

For those wondering, why would you want dabbawala to carry your tiffin? And what real-world problems is it solving when you look at it from a startup perspective. 

SOLVING TWO LOGISTICAL CHALLENGES

One is that Mumbai local trains have lines extending 60 to 70km, and they are very crowded. To reach office at 9 or even 10 in the morning, a lot of workers would have to begin their journey early in the morning and it would be a great hassle for members of their families to wake up as early as 6 in the morning to prepare their lunches. 

Secondly, even if they do have to travel a little late, the trains are crowded and a full-sized meal box would be a hassle to carry in such a crowded train.

It has a team of skilled laborers who work round the clock using various modes of transport, trains, cycles, hand-pulled carts, huge carriers over the top of their head--you name it, they have it. 

Many of them cannot read or write, yet, they are better performers than the most of the folks you see working for any startup. This has been continuing for decades now.

In 1998, Forbes Magazine recognized its reliability to match the Six Sigma standard. This means that the dabbawalas make less than 1 mistake in every 6 million deliveries. 

A very driven business with all the fundamentals required for a successful startup is evident in each and every employee. It's Quality Culture, and the values of each employee.

If you really look at it from the cultural aspect, they all are founders and stakeholders who give more than 100 percent each time they are out there doing their job. Come hell or highwater, your dabbawaala will never fail you--be it the heavy rains during monsoon, or shutdown of various forms of transport on a lot of days, or any kind of traffic jam--nothing stops these folks from doing their job.

They know every nook and corner of each street they have to go to and are more often than none accurate and timely in their deliveries. They have a very insighftul coding system on the lunchboxes based on the delivery area and most of the work is done on paper, without the use of any kind of technology--except the association's service of enabling booking via SMS. This is indicative of how it's adapting to change and scaling the business. 

So what are the learnings, startups can take from this amazing feat of solving real-world problems without any hiccups?

OWNERSHIP

"Ownership is a feeling that an employee has to instill in oneself, and unless you get that feeling of ownership you cannot work excellently," Pawan Agarwal, CEO of Dabbawala Association, said during one of his speeches at the E-Summit 2012 in IIT Delhi. 

Yes, driving this is an important aspect when it comes to startups. Building that culture is an integral part of making your startup successful. Very few people today aspire to become linchpins within organizations they work for. If your startup is driving that culture, appreciating the hard work, and giving the employees and stakeholders to nurture ownership of any kind, you would actually see the efficiency increase manifolds immediately. 

SIMPLICITY 

The people of Mumbai say with confidence: "Our lunch can go wrong but not the Mumbai dabbawalas." Why is that possible? It all boils down to keeping things simple. 

Be it a Steve Jobs or Picasso, all the great artists always had a penchant for simplicity. The dabbawalas maintain that value and drive great efficiency at keeping their basics simple. The process is very lean, very uncomplicated, and doesn't involve any form of algorithms or flowcharts or complicated SOPs and process charts or reports. 

The best innovations world over are the simplest.

BUILD SERVICES AROUND YOUR OWN INFRASTRUCTURE

Dabbawalas use a combination of various transport modes, especially very efficient and low cost ones. Trains, cycles, and handcarts contribute to maintaining reliable, efficient, and accurate delivery timelines. 

AS LEAN AS IT GETS

If you consider the dabawallas, their invesment is bare minimum--two bicycles, a wooden crate for the tiffins, white cotton kurta pyjamas, and the trademark white Gandhi cap, or topi as it's called.

When you look at this enterprise, certainly there's a lot more that everyone can learn from, but one most important aspect and one that cannot be ignored no matter which business your startup is--Focus on the Customer! 

#Leadership #CustomerSatisfaction