The ups and downs of ‘Mumbai Dabbawalas’.

Mumbai dabbawalas represents a unique delivery system of tiffins or lunch boxes to the office workers from their homes at a minimum value.

How does they work:

Traditionally a whitely dressed and caped person reaches at the office workers house (who have booked a service from the dabbawalas) to pick up the lunch box, the dabbawalas arrive around 9:00-11:00 Am, at a personally and mutually dealt time period. Then the initial dabbawala transfers the collected lunch box to the nearest railway station to a different dabbawala team member, then after reaching the destination or nearest railway station of the mentioned office worker, a different member of the dabbawala’s team takes the lunch box to the office’s destination, which is around 1:00-2:00 Pm. Afterwards the dabbawalas again run the same method to bring back the lunch box to the office worker’s personal destination or home (usually to the mistress or to a family member of the office employee).

The whole process is completed at a specific and pinpoint time frame. Thus, if a family of an office worker makes a delay to hand over the lunch box to the dabbawala, the dabbawala might refuse to accept the lunch box after the elapsed time frame, as it may cause the whole delivery chain to get disrupted.

Pre-pandemic era:

The dabbawala service was formed in the late 1800’s (around 130 years ago) when domestic and foreign migrants were shifting to Mumbai, which was causing havoc in the supply chain of foods (especially in the light meal category), office workers generally had to arrive at company’s destination which were usually stationed at main lands, but the workers were generally from the city outskirts. Thus, they had limited options for home cooked meals, as they had to leave for the office at an early hour. Thus, dabbawalas originated under Mahadeo.H.Bachche, who came with the plan for a unique supply chain system. A delivery system where they would collect and deliver home cooked meals or lunch boxes to the proper destination (office workers destination) and again return it back to the homes of the office employees. Thus this supply chain had almost remained immune from any kind of disruption for more than a century (130 years).

Post-pandemic era:

Covid-19 had been hard on almost all the classes of society, it had been equally or even more hard for the dabbawalas, once who had drew their wages by means of delivering lunch boxes of the office workers / employees, became jobless after sudden derange in the services sector. Office workers / employees had been asked to work from homes, many office workers had lost their jobs due to the company's cut in profit shares. Thus, the legacy of dabbawalas came to a verge of extinction which remained intact for almost a century. Once there were more than 5000 dabbawalas, who had been working for the supply chain system , now has a minimal 1000 people workforce, as many of the dabbawalas had to shift to a different form of earnings to run their family expenses.

Future of Mumbai dabbawalas:

Though the last couple of years had been hard on the dabbawalas, there’s still a tiny hope left, as the offices in different parts of Mumbai are re-opening, dabbawalas might be able to restart their usual services.

(The article was different from the rest, not about the share market or a conventional company but a story of an entity, run by 5000 people who are most commonly and conventionally called as ‘Mumbai Dabbawalas’. This article shows how the course of time changes the theme of the most explicitly run businesses on the globe).