Kamaldeep Singh

11PGDM086
Organizational Behaviour -I
Section B

The Dabbawalas of Mumbai: Case Study

The dabbawalas of Mumbai are the people who facilitate the delivery of home-made food from the
homes to offices of the employees (customers). They do so in the aluminum containers, which serve the
dual purpose of keeping the food warm as well as to keep it intact. They have been around since almost
1890, but registered themselves as a trust in 1967. More than 175,000–200,000 lunchboxes are
delivered every day by almost 4,500–5,000 dabbawalas, and with a precision that have earned them the
tag of six sigma rating. These dabbawalas are employed by almost 800 supervisors. This means that
there is one wrong delivery in every 60,00,000 or more deliveries. They have their name in Guiness book
of world records as holder of best time management. The case examines the Dabbawalas way of
working, by describing the delivery process. It also explains their unique coding process to identify the
lunch boxes.

SWOT Analysis

Positive Negative
Strengths: Weaknesses:
 Perfect time management  Low literacy in Workers
 No fuel Costs  High dependency on public transport
 No dependency on technology  Funds for association
 Customer Loyalty achieved by
customer satisfaction.
 Team Work
Internal

 Low Cost of operations

 Nominal Pricing of the services

Opportunities:
 Low operational cost gives the
opportunity of expanding and
maximizing the benefits.
 Upcoming technologies like Mobiles,
SMS
 Upcoming sites like
External
Threats:
 Fast food free delivery chains coming
up
 Adverse weather Conditions
 The reliability on public transport
 Different shift timing systems of MNCs

www.mydabbawala.com can
popularize the community among
modern users.

Factors contributing to teamwork

 Team co-ordination
  High level of trust among the workers
 Hierarchy levels are low, which increases the approachability
 Common dress code to identify
 Discipline in management of time in all the weather conditions
 The workers share a common background

Outcome of teamwork

 Extremely high levels of accuracy in delivery (more than 99.9999% )

 Higher customer satisfaction
 Customer loyalty
 Enjoying monopoly for last 50 years
 Perfect logistics and supply chain management

My advice as consultant to the dabbawalas to retain their glory and effective

teamwork
 Making use of the modern day technologies like bookings by SMS
 Extensive use of the websites
 Promotion of the need and benefits of home cooked meals
 Hearing out the problems of the dabbawalas and taking effective steps as they are the main link
in the whole delivery system.
 Promote themselves as a brand.