Group leader Narayanji and coordinator-speaker Subodh B. Sangle of the Mumbai Dabbawala team were in Coimbatore city on invitation from Sankara Institute of Management Science (SIMS) to host a workshop for the management students.

Subodh began with clarifying that Dabbawalas were not caterers; they only deliver food. He explained their flow of operations right from collection of the lunch boxes (dabbas) to sorting them, uploading them into the trains, downloading them from the trains at various stations, sorting them again, and distributing without mix-ups, to their clients all over the Mumbai city and its suburbs.

More than 200,000 lunch boxes are delivered daily by 5000 Dabaawalas within eight hours. What awed the audience was how these Dabbawalas carry a load of up to 60-70 kg, travel nearly 70 kilometres everyday in jam-packed local trains, and have an error of one in 16 million transactions.

“Most of the dabbawalas are semi-illiterate, but they operate successfully with the aid of simple unique coding system that they write on each Dabba (lunch box), which helps them deliver the boxes to the correct person on time. Since the process is simple and effective, they did not want to increase the cost of operations and complicate the process by bringing in technology,” Sangle said.

The interactive session was an eye opener for the corporate participants from Coimbatore and an enriching learning experience for the students and the faculty of SIMS.