ORGANISING WORK - PAST PRESENT AND

EVOLVING POSSIBILITIES

The Dabbawala System: On-

Submitted by :

ARUN SHARMA 0409/56

ARSHDEEP SINGH GOINDI 0014/56

Mumbai Dabbawalas
The case explores the study of the Mumbai dabbawala organization, which has achieved

high service performance (at par with six sigma levels of operation), and with a low cost,

simple, and effective operating system. The case aims at breaking down all aspects of the

delivery system ranging from information management, logistics, and processes to

motivation and the human resource system as well. Towards the end, we are presented

with the current challenges that the delivery system faces in terms of an exploding

customer base and evolving technology and also focuses on a suggestion brought forward

by a consultant to keep up with the changes in the delivery environment.

Starting with a brief introduction, the dabbawala system is a 129 year old organization with

a strength of around 5000 dabbawalas delivering the ‘dabbas’, or lunch boxes throughout

the city of Mumbai. The workforce is semi-literate with the majority of the people being

uneducated (which actually works in the organization’s favour) and maximum degree of

education in the organization being college, that too in the upper level management. The

pride of the system is the excellence in logistics established with minimum technology and

extremely low costs. The model also suits well for sustainability considerations since the

overall footprint per delivery person is low barring the common local train network used.

The organization hierarchy is flat with self governing groups along with a profit-sharing

system within the group, which keeps the organizational commitment in check. There are

however, two bodies of upper management, one which manages the broad operations and

implements logistic policies and the charitable fund body being the second. While the

company has enjoyed massive success till date, the agenda today is to look towards the

future into adoption of technology.

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The first opportunity of business was identified by Mahadev Haji Bache after a long

standing tradition of dabbawalas working separately since 1885. He pioneered the

organization and monetization of the delivery as a service by bringing in people from his

tribe from a village near Pune as executives. One of the key reasons for the company's

success is the Mumbai rail network that runs extensively throughout the longitudinal city.

This also forms the basis of why the system faced problems when being integrated with

other cities or even countries. (consider the Delhi example). New Customer acquisition is

mostly done by word of mouth channel. Advertising is done in person along with the

delivery by using specialized cycles (white handles), carts, and hats.

New member recruitment is done exclusively via referrals, them being mostly the friends or

relatives of the current members. Such close membership is purposely done to recruit

people with similar values, shared culture and specifically shared work ethic. After a 6

month probationary period, they are asked to invest 10 times the expected monthly group

income to become a permanent member. The organization values commitment more than

qualification and hence, recruits semi-literate or even uneducated members.

The company is open to experimentation and being ‘future-ready’ especially in the face of

increasing complexities such as delays in the system due to exploding customer force, a

growing number of vehicles on the road, disobedience of traffic rules to ensure timely

delivery, and most importantly managing the commitment in the extreme weather

conditions. Hence, the January 15th meeting involves future planning as one of the agendas

where Mr. Joshi, a consultant, plans to integrate technology to mitigate some of these

issues. The agenda involves upgradation of English language website to even include online

payment systems along with other measures, alternate revenue streams, increase product

portfolio (CD documentary, “Gandhi Caps”, Dabbas, Mugs etc.) and finally simple CRM

system as well. Mr Joshi has the convince the operations upper management for the above

points followed by an action plan for implementation as well contingent to the success of

the approval by the firm leaders.

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 CASE ANALYSIS

Template of Organisation

Firm Infrastructure: Firm has a constant infrastructure. Elected based on voting to move

up the chain. People with experiences form an integral part of the system and occupy

higher positions. Hub & Spoke model process model in deliverin

HRM: Dabbawala has a robust recruiting, hiring and training program to ensure no error

happens. They hire from same set of villages and firing also is clearly defined

Technology Development: 0 to low technology involvement in functioning of the

dabbawalas

Procurement: Not backward integrated. Their primary job is to just deliver the food

containers

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Primary Activities: Operations consist of delivering food from home to target site (office)

& empty dabba back. Dabbawalas don’t market themselves too much, they acquire

customers by word of mouth. Presence of website for merchandise of dabbawala. Service

is top priority with very low error rates. They use cycles, trains or on foot service to fulfil the

job.

Primary & Secondary resource: Primary resources are the dabbas & the secondary

resources are 5000-6000 dabbawalas.

Organisation Hierarchy
Coordination hierarchy for dabbawalas is Flat structure which enables quick decision

making & is very helpful in uncertain situations. Flat structure matches the increased

employee level of responsibility as employees are shareholders/partners. Motivation to

perform better & consistently is self driven.

Fewer levels ensures easier decision making process while eliminating extra costs of having

a middle management layer. This particular factor has been very valuable in Dabbawalas

providing value in the Mumbai monsoon. Although flat structure leads to limited growth

and hard to make changes leadings to less changes to maintain the structure working

properly.

Organization Structure
Technology : Structure has stayed technology less for long period of time and will lead to

major changes with the need of going digital

Legal Forms: Dabbawalas are the partners in the organisation where the profit sharing is

done at the end of the cycle. It is close to a co-operative.

Convention, Tradition: Organisation structure is highly influenced by century long traditions

in terms of hiring & the motto of serving customers equivalent to serving god.

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Funding Preferences: The funding preference for the Dabbawalas has been donations or

marketing fees.

Goals: Goal of organisation to have constant cash flow, attaining profits

Swot Analysis
● Strengths

○ Low operation cost

○ Customer satisfaction

○ Low error rate (1 in 6 million)

○ High coordination

○ Simple yet efficient

● Weakness

○ Limited access to education

○ Dependency on funds

○ Local trains from backbone for efficient organisation

● Opportunity

○ Increased importance & Publicity

○ Advertisements funds

○ Movement to Catering food system

● Threats

○ Losing efficiency with increased road traffic

○ Losing relevance with company provided transport services

○ Office canteens & fast food joints

○ Congestion in transport system & Problems in monsoon

○ Decreasing acceptable customer base

What makes dabbawalas so good:

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 ● Driven by purpose & value- Work as worships- Serving food means serving God.

● Focussed Business in terms of delivering food, sticking to strengths

● Flat organisation structure ensuring quick thinking & decision making

● Abandoning bad customers to ensure escalation- bullwhip effect can be reduced.

● Employees are key to the success of the dabbawala system. HR system of hiring,

training from a specific set of villages ensure standardization & replaceable fit.

● Shareholder member system

● Standard shape & size lunch boxes

● Human centric design approach by using color coding

● Systematic, repeatable, iterative, and predictable sequence of transaction

CONCLUSION- PARTNERSHIPS TO EMBARK A CHANGE

Introducing Technology to dabbawalas

digital can ensure easy checking process of the customer at the same time can ensure

much smoother resource planning & management for the dabbawalas

Mobile Phones & Data: Prevalence of cheap data and connectivity in the last 3 years, the

move towards digital seems inevitable and smooth. Mumbai Dabbawalas can form

partnerships with giants of JIO which themselves are based out of the City of Mumbai. This

can help in brand marketing at the same time for Reliance.

Resource Planning: Setting up an innovative app with help of Microsoft like companies to

form an easy enterprise resource planning app to ensure timely & efficient delivery. Point

and click system

CNG Fuelled motorbikes: CNG fuelled motorbikes to ensure higher Dabba carrying

capacity per dabbawala. These motorbikes will keep the environment in check if not 0 &

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can be funded by donations. They could also be used as advertisement carriers, thus

adding to constant revenue streams.

Unacademy: Partnering with Unacademy like apps can be used to educate the

dabbawalas, these sources could involve lessons on learning the daily working of a

dabbawala thus decreasing onboarding time as well as development lessons in terms of

language & technology usage.

CONCLUSION- PERSUASION STRATEGY FOR THE MEETING

We deploy Kotler’s 8 step persuasion strategy for Joshi to follow to recommend changes to

the upper management of Dabbawalas.:-

Creating a sense of Urgency:- For the situation presented, there is an impending need of

technology integration into the delivery system. However, persuading the decision makers

for urgent implementation requires Joshi to convey how the backwardness of the current

logistics are harming the customer base both in terms of new workforce acquisition and

user-base retention. Apart from that, the geographical barriers like monsoons, and rains

harming the logistics set-up right now might be mitigated by the technology aid which is

long awaited for an upgrade to the current system.

Forming a guiding coalition:- The next steps after policy formulation will be

implementation, the dynamics of which need to be cleared in our communication strategy

right now. Given the autonomy of the logistics system, it becomes necessary for upper

management here to be convinced of the plan for seamless adoption by the dabbawalas as

well. Along with that, a digitally- enabled workforce/ contractors need to be added to

implement the plan in mind.

Develop an Inspired Vision and empower others to enact the vision:- A common

guiding vision must be created within the coalition created to implement the changes down

to the grassroot level. This vision will encompass the explanation of necessary benefits of

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the technology implementation to the delivery guys and ask for their support for the

success of the plan.

Generating Short-Term Wins and sustain acceleration of the vision:- Since the proposal

is long term, we recommend that Joshi first establish short-term achievable goals by

splitting the plan into phases. Such division would not only act as an effective persuasion

strategy to get stakeholders on board (conveying its authenticity), but will also help to track

the implementation by establishing necessary control KPIs. Monitoring these KPIs will in

turn sustain accelerated growth of the plan.

Instituting permanent change/ Refreezing the system:- Post the implementation of the

plan, the role of the coalition (typically Joshi) will be to act as a grievance redressal cell

aiding the long term survival of the instituted change. It's also necessary for a governing

body to oversee these problems so that the workforce does not return the previous

system.

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