Dabbawalla
Accurate & on time deliveries… Mumbai Dabbawalas
What would be more enough to show the success story of dabbawala that the bollywood movie story has been created with a special role of Mumbai Dabbawala.. A movie released on 13th September titled “Lunch Box” has a base which only revolves around the dabbawalas. The movie shows that a dabbawala plays a special role in increasing love between man & women by transferring dabbas daily to the office of a man.
There could be nothing more perfect than the work that a Mumbai dabbawala does. The dabbawalas of Mumbai are so proficient in the work they do that many eminent personalities from all over the world have visited them and have acknowledged the hard work they do just to feed their clients well and on time. These dabbawalas are very good at the work they do and make no errors ever. Many management gurus have formulated management theories upon the dabbawalas of Mumbai. These people are so good at their work that they never fail to fulfill their duties and that also on time. Whether it is the busy roads or the overcrowded suburban trains, whether it’s the blazing hot sun or whether it is the heavy showers of rain pouring… nothing has been able to deter a dabbawala from doing his task of delivering lunch boxes to his customer without any delay.
A dabbawala is generally out on the busy streets of the Mumbai by 9 in the morning with his bicycle which is very heavy as it has another kind of carrier that has been designed with extra iron to bear loads of weight. By 10:30 AM he collects all the Tiffin from various locations and delivers them to the respective offices latest by 1PM. He is never late in delivering these Tiffin and also never makes any mistake in delivering any lunchbox to the customers’ office. People from all over the world appreciate the work done by the Mumbai dabbawalas.
Mumbai Dabbawala: A Unique Signature Style
Many people around the world have an excitement to know about the Dabbawalas. Many questions arises in mind while thinking about Mumbai dabbawalas like how they deliver these large quantity of 200,000 tiffins accurately in a very less time daily, what ideas & strategies they use to perform their work and many others. The Dabbawalas are here to give answers for all of your exciting questions. The Association of Dabbawala uses some simple strategies for their work. The whole process of taking the dabba from the customer’s home, dispatching to customers & again collecting that dabbas from the customers is divided into different time slots. The first 3 hours includes taking & delivering these more than 200,000 dabbas & remaining half includes the collection.
A unique color coding system we use for specification of the tiffins. The small codes were written in four different colors of red, green, yellow & blue which includes source, destination & floor number to which the dabba (tiffin) is going to be delivered. It becomes easy to deliver tiffin to the right customer wherever the customer in Mumbai is. As the lunch box moves to six sigma levels of accuracy, the chances of any type of error is just one in 16 million transactions. At the source station, the dabbas were loaded into the wooden crates which move on the luggage compartment of the local train. At the destination station, the unloading of the dabbas takes place, at this phase the lunch boxes were arranged according to the destination area. Than these dabbas were setup in special crates with 150 dabbas per crate which is driven by 3,4 dabbawalas. Than the correct dabba delivers to correct customer during the lunch time. After that the collection process takes place. All this process goes on daily by the dabbawalas.
Mumbai Dabbawala: A Unique Working Style
Everyone have an excitement to know about the working style of Mumbai Dabbawala. Many thoughts and questions comes in mind while thinking about the dabbawalas like how they deliver these 200,000 tiffins accurately in just three hours daily, what strategies they use to perform their work and many other questions too. We the Dabbawalas are here to give answers for all of your answers.
The Association of Dabbawala uses color coding system for the accuracy. The small codes were written in four different colors of red, green, yellow & blue which includes source, destination & floor number to which the dabba (tiffin) is going to be delivered. By this coding system it becomes easy to deliver tiffin to the right customer wherever the customer in Mumbai is. As the lunch box moves to six sigma levels of accuracy, the chances of any type of error is just one in 16 million transactions. At the source station, the dabbas were loaded into the wooden crates which moves on the luggage compartment of the local train. At the destination station, the unloading of the dabbas takes place, at this phase the lunch boxes were arranged according to the destination area. Than these dabbas were setup in special crates with 150 dabbas per crate which is driven by 3,4 dabbawalas. Than the correct dabba delivers to correct customer during the lunch time. After that the collection process takes place. All this process goes on daily by the dabbawalas.
Your love wrapped lunch comes to your desk
What could be better than eating home cooked food daily even when you are away from home? Well it has been made possible with the help of the dabbawalas of Mumbai who have taken up responsibility of feeding home cooked lunch to the working class people of Mumbai. People who cannot visit their homes during lunch times but want to eat the food that has been cooked at their homes itself can take the help of these very professional people who deliver tiffin boxes to their customer’s offices. A dabbawala is called so simply because he does the work of delivering lunch boxes of their customers to their offices after collecting it from their respective homes and these tiffin boxes have freshly prepared hot food that has been cooked at the home of their customers. So for a simple reason of delivering lunch boxes, a person doing this work is called a dabbawala. These people are truly dedicated towards their work and show utmost commitment towards it. Real bad weather or a high end traffic jam, nothing could make him move from doing his duty on time. A dabbawala always makes sure that he delivers the lunch of his customer to his office well before the lunch time and with no chance of making any kind of mistake at all. You can know more about a Mumbai dabbawala by visiting their official website which has all the information relevant to the life of a Mumbai dabbawala.
Lunch along with love and care
All the working professionals of India would love to eat the food that has been prepared at their home, by their mother or their wife. Well you can have the food that has been prepared at home in your lunch because the dabbawalas of Mumbai will let you enjoy that food daily.
The Association of Dabbawala is a team of truly professional and dedicated people who promise to serve hot, freshly prepared home cooked food to their customers. These people collect your Tiffin boxes from your home and deliver it to your office, in whichever corner of Mumbai it is. These people make sure that the food you get to eat is hot even when you eat it in your lunch time. The dabbawalas of Mumbai exhibit very good coordination among them and are a great example of effective and efficient time management and team work. These people belong to the warkari sect of maharashtrian society and are semi literate people thus they have no knowledge of any theories on management and other such basics of management but still they are able to show efficient management and leave no room for any mistake taking place. Many people from all over the world have recognized the hard work and efforts put in by these people to serve their customers that too so efficiently. Be it heavy monsoons or be it chilling hot summers of Mumbai, nothing could stop him from working towards his goal of serving people.
Mumbai Dabbawala: Treating Each Customer A Special One
Today, when you see a picture some wherein the newspaper or anywhere else which shows a man wearing a white cap having the dabbas(tiffins) in the hand suddenly your mind will click a name “a Dabbawala”. This is the success of Dabbawalas. Today we are known among the whole world by our working style. We are the people from Mumbai, India. Dabbawalas in Mumbai are nearly 5000 in numbers and all of us are semiliterate workers. People call us from many different names like dabbewala, dabbawalla, Dabbawallah. The only work these 5000 dabbawalas in the Association of Dabbawalaperform is that taking the freshly made food from customer’s home & deliver it to their offices during the lunch time in the tiffin boxes or dabbas with a perfect time accuracy. The number of dabbas we daily deliver is more than 2,00000.As we are not the highly qualified workers, so we don’t have the high class management theories to perform our duty. This is the reason why our work seems to be a wonder to most of the people, so that we achieved many achievements. The name of Dabbawalas is registered in Guinness Book of World Record; we also have a world record in Best Time Management, Dabbawalas were registered in Repley’s Believe it or Not too. We use a coding system for the dabbas and each dabba moves on 6 different hands during the whole process. Therefore the chances for any mistake is only 0.01%.
The Summary of the Whole Process: The process of carrying and delivering the dabbas is divided into different time slots. The tiffin after carrying from the customer’s home taken into the wooden crates and transferred into goods compartment of the train. After that at the destination, unloading takes place and each tiffin is arranged according to the destination area & building. The dabbas now arranged into the special crate with 150 tiffins. Similarly the tiffins were collected from the destination and in the same way they reaches to their home. For this work we only charge Rs 200/tiffin per month.
Mumbai Dabbawala 