The ‘dabbawalas’ of Mumbai make up a lunchbox delivery and return system that takes hot lunches from homes to people at work. It’s a 130-year-old Indian delivery service. The ‘walas’ (or tiffin wallahs) are usually illiterate and innumerate; they cannot read destination addresses but can find their way around Mumbai (population 20 million), using colours, street objects, shapes and visual recognition.
The lunchboxes are picked up in the late morning and delivered mainly using bicycles and trains, and the empty boxes are then returned back home, in the afternoon. A real 19th century Deliveroo or Uber Eats.
Urbanisation
In the late 1800’s, an increasing number of migrants were moving to Bombay, as it was known then, from different parts of the country, and fast food and canteens were not prevalent. All these people left early in the morning for offices, and often had to go hungry for lunch. They belonged to different communities, and therefore had different types of tastes, which could only be satisfied by their own home-cooked meals.
So, in 1890, Mahadeo Bachche started his successful lunch delivery service with a hundred men. A colour-coding system identifies destination and recipient. Each dabbawala must contribute a minimum capital in kind, in the form of two bicycles, a wooden crate for the tiffins, white cotton kurta-pyjamas, and the white Gandhi cap (topi).
Each month there is a division of the earnings for each unit. Fines are imposed for alcohol, tobacco, indiscipline, being out of uniform and absenteeism.
A collecting dabbawala, usually on a bicycle, collects dabbas (boxes) either from a worker’s home or from the dabba makers. As many of the carriers are of limited literacy (the average literacy of dabbawallas is that of Year 9), all the boxes have distinguishing marks.
The dabbawala then takes them to a sorting station, where grouped boxes are put on trains, with markings to identify their destination. The markings include the railway station to unload the boxes and the destination building delivery address. At each station, boxes are handed over to a local dabbawala, who delivers them. The empty boxes are collected after lunch or the next day and sent back to the respective houses. The dabbawalas also allow for delivery requests through SMS.
Most tiffin-wallahs are related to each other, belonging to the Varkari sect of Maharashtra, and come from the same small village near Pune. Tiffin distribution is suspended for five days each March as the tiffin-wallahs go home for the annual village festival.
Economic analysis
Each dabbawala is paid around 8,000 rupees per month (about £80 / or €100 Euros). The lunch boxes are moved each day by 4,500 to 5,000 dabbawalas. The union initiation fee is 30,000 rupees, which guarantees a 5,000-rupee monthly income and a job for life. The 150 rupee a month fee provides for delivery six days a week.
The business magazine Forbes claimed that dabbawalas make fewer than one mistake in every sixteen million deliveries. The New York Times reported that the 130-year-old dabbawala industry continues to grow at a rate of 5–10% per year.
Case Studies
2005, the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad) featured a case study from the logistics management perspective.
2010, the Harvard Business Review included ‘The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time’ for its high level of service with a low-cost and simple operating system.
2014, Uma Krishnan’s PhD was “A Cross-Cultural Study of the Literacy Practices of The Dabbawalas: Towards a New Understanding of Non-mainstream Literacy and its Impact on Successful Business Practices”
James Neophytou
