Ms. Sanskriti Shivankar-Management Learning’s From Dabbawala
Name: Sanskriti Shivankar
Qualification: MSc Chemistry, PGDM HR 2024-26 (Pursuing)
Declaration:
I declare that this essay is the work of my own creation as part of essays competition organized by Dabbawala Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. I transfer the ownership, title and rights of this essay to Dabbawala Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. Dabbawala Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. may use this essay content in any way it deems suitable.
Name: Sanskriti Shivankar
Date: 15/08/2024
Management Learnings from Dabbawala
As a girl, living away from home, the most important thing that anyone can miss is “GHAR KA KHANA”. The home cooked food is the real comfort and love can anyone have. But everyone doesn’t have that lucky life they want, but it is possible for the people who are living in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Yes! It is possible to get home cooked food with the same love and comfort at your door place and this thing is made possible by none other than “MUMBAI DABBAWALAS”
“Mumbai-One of the most populous cities in the country since earlier.” Many people their journey form here, Mumbai people are so so busy that probably they didn’t even have a good food and sleep.In this Marathon dabbawalas are playing crucial role to make people’s life easier by providing them Tasty, hygienic and homemade food at their place. The dabbawala journey starts with a very small incident,a parsi banker wanted to have a home cooked food and he find a way to get it by giving a responsibility to a guy who make sure he get the home cooked food at his office and from here the dabbawala term originated. Observing that banker many people also started liking the idea and started hiring dabbawalas for this service. In the year 1890,when Britishers were ruling our country, A wise man Mahadeo Havaji Bacche, understood the need at that time and wanted to fulfill people need of good food.And he came up with yhe the idea called MUMBAI DABBAWALA. This Organisation started with just a simple intension to serve a good homemade food. But they also didn’t knew that by the time they are going to be this much Important part of Mumbaikar’s life. The need of this homemade food is so big that they are having an army of 5000 people working with them, they are delivering 2,00,000 dabbas to people, which means they are dealing 4,00,000 exchange of dabbas in 1 single day. and The most important and the intresting thing is the error they made is 1 in a million which means 0.000001% that we cant even consider in our daily This skill of their work and management is announced as a sixth sigma performance. Doing this much work with is superiority requires a lot of data handling devices and digital terminologys right. But No, not in the case of dabbawalas they managed this all by themselves with a zero technological background. Also many of them, around 85% people working in the organisation are Illiterate. So untill now technology is not their thing. They daily cover maximum area in mumbai, approximately 60-70 km to distribute the dabbas and we might feel amazed after knowing this that they do this things within a time slot of 3 hours only. They have kept the cost of dabba fir each month is 700-800 rupees and monthly earnings are 13000-15000 rupees.and company’s turnover is 30 crore which is amazing. Doing all this huge amount of work dabbawalas are maintaining the image if the purity as they didn’t have a single police case. Despite all the challenges dabbawalas are doing their job at best they can.For doing and implementing the strategic planning they also have a strong operating supply chains. Which not only understood the code but deliver the tiffin within the time.
Dabbawalas are putting alot of efforts at their work with maintaining simplicity and decency at their Without taking any help from technology and IT they are making everything is possible by their own startegies and ideas, Doing the service by this way, this makes this dabbas cheaper and affordable for others. they took care of people by giving them Tasty food .They have a very low attrition rate and high retention rate.
Along with all the strength and qualities they have, there are many threats rising. As they are not using any technology they are not able to expand each and every area,which is very important for the business to go forward.Another thing is that they need to understand this is a generation which rely on internet fir many uses,and if they are not using it they will lag behind.Anither point to mention here is that,they completely rely on the public transport which is sometime could be the matter of inconvenience because of the train delay or any natural calamities.As manu people know their existence but very few knew their work so to ensure that other companies start investing into and making it a huge business people are not able to get them. Another lets not say the kost important but the can’t ignore the thing is the education. Dabbawalas have to educate their seleves It not only will help them but they also increase number of investors into their respective companies.And can able to compete with the new threats like swiggy Zomato,etc.All this companies are analysing data, make a huge connection and getting help from internet to grow well,Hence same goes with dabbawalas.Also their upcoming generation are becoming educated, their needs theirs wants might be different,they might feel this is a lower level business and not able to understood the importance of it.People are getting used to this zomato swiggy thing more and Not using dabba.
Despite all the problems this dabbawalas are facing, they can still find some solutions to it,as. They can definitely involved this business on social media platforms to make it more viewable. People around everywhere get to know that what exactly this dabbawalas do for them. Also the upcoming literate generation will help them to get more networking. Along with that they should show data analytics and technological in their culture, might be then one fine day Dabbawala can rule the city and the nation. Which will help this dabba walaa to maintain the higher quality at lower rate and helping people doing and considering delivering food is just not a business but a service of them to people. Here I believe that this hardworking people will definitely overcome all this problem and came up with a great trend. I am very proud of this people and hope they will win this battle.
#Dabbawala#Mumbai.
