“The stomach is never in recession”
The “Dabbawalas” are a unique and surprisingly efficient people run system originating from the business hub of India; Mumbai, with a turnover surpassing $400 million
The system which has been accredited the Sigma Six notation from Harvard, runs entirely on the principals of teamwork to cater “Ghar ka Khanna” (literally translated to: A home cooked meal)
According to me, this system is one of the most fascinating cases studies, emerging out of a developing country.
The Dabbawalas deliver home cooked food to the mass middle class Indians who live in Mumbai. The food system originated out of a need to get a home cooked meal delivered to people who travel via train or long distances to reach their work, where carrying a tiffin box would be infeasible (as the food would get cold etc)
The Dabbawalas deliver millions of home cooked tiffin boxes on foot to the people, the most fascinating point is that this rather raw system of using human labour works as well as it does, with less than 1 mistake per million boxes. The operations perspective of this company is multifaceted, and hosts an array of variables such as collecting the prepared food, then putting them into assorted boxes per district, per street and then delivering these boxes (whilst still hot) to their respective owners.
One thing which comes up constantly when discussing the Dabbawalas is how they have a consistent profit margin of 400 million dollars, especially since they target the lower middle class people. But I guess this is where “the stomach is never in recession” comes up, it’s true, food is a necessity, the Dabbawalas took this and incorporated it into the ideology of a home cooked meal which Indians cherish the most.
This system is also one of the most efficiently run systems in the world, which further lends to its high profit, but for me, what’s most interesting is, how the teamwork intensive system of the Dabbawalas has sustained itself for so long, without any hiccups along the way. According to me, this is because of the pride the Dabbawalas have for their job, and the equal pay they all receive at the end of the day, creating a trusting environment for the employees to work in.
