EATING THEIR LUNCH
Technology is taking business from India’s famed dabbawallas,
For more than 100 years, Mumbai’s famous lunchbox delivery men have brought thousands of homecooked meals each day from residences on the outskirts of the city to workers in the centre.
The men, called dabbawallas, use a complex delivery system that’s been studied by academics around the world, including Harvard Business School. The men themselves, with their trademark white shirts and caps, are a familiar sight in Mumbai, and they have been featured in the Bollywood movie The Lunchbox.
But, despite their renown, the dabbawallas have been struggling to keep up with the plethora of fooddelivery apps and services and changing tastes in India’s most cosmopolitan city.
In recent months, they’ve launched a new website, added scooters to speed deliveries and begun moonlighting for e-commerce companies and delivering freshly pressed juices or organic milk.
But, now, an acrimonious debate about further expansion is threatening to split the tight-knit group of nearly 5,000, which has prided itself on teamwork and community spirit since it was founded in 1890 during the days of British raj.
“There are a few people who are trying to be a hurdle for modernization,” said Kiran Gavande, 33, a dabbawalla sorting lunch boxes outside Mumbai’s Churchgate railway station. “They want everything to stay the same. They’re only thinking of themselves.”
On work days, an estimated 5,000 dabbawallas fan out to homes around Mumbai to pick up hot lunches cooked by family members for workers who leave their homes in the early morning. At the railway station, the dabbawallas use a coding system to sort the boxes, separating them by area, loading them onto crates and hopping on crowded commuter trains to deliver them throughout the city.
The dabbawallas, only about 15 per cent of whom have attended junior high school, according to the Harvard study, manage, through a combination of strict rules, group support and an unfailing belief that “serving food is like serving God,” wrote Stefan Thomke, the Harvard University professor of business administration who oversaw the study, in 2012.
Dabbawallas make about $180 to $225 a month, and $60 to $75 more if they moonlight by delivering for e-commerce companies, they say.
The recent controversy erupted when their 28-yearold spokesman and English-speaking consultant, Subodh B. Sangle, spoke at one of India’s premiere management schools, outlining a plan to start a new business that would link the dabbawallas with multinational companies to capitalize on their logistics acumen. Many of the older dabbawallas rejected this idea, and some have even called for Sangle’s removal.
“Right now, we’re going to stick with the same work,” said Raghunath D. Medge, the founder and president of the Mumbai Dabbawalla Association, noting that any decision on a new company would have to be voted on by the entire group.
Yet some of the other dabbawallas think they need to change in order to survive. “The young dabbawallas are very happy with this,” countered Sangle. “They think it’s going to raise their income and add more value to their lives.”