
The daily lunch delivery of India's dabbawallahs  - ultrasaurus
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2882-the-incredible-delivery-system-of-indias-dabbawallahs
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potatolicious
Having grown up in Asia before moving to the West, I've always wondered why we
accept such shoddy excuses for lunch around here. You've got limp, cold
sandwiches, or reheated leftovers in tupperwares.

Or you spend a pretty dime on some nice, real food by eating out.

Where I grew up, lunchboxes are small, but elaborate - food is neatly
compartmentalized like in the article, and just about every place has a
steamer to heat it up without the use of microwaves (aka the dessicator).

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radicaldreamer
What you're seeing is a low standard of living in action. There's enough
surplus labor in India to deliver food from homes to offices everyday. You
could do this in the US as well- but be prepared to pay however much labor and
transportation costs.

Average productivity in the US is also much higher than in India (that's why
wages are higher), but Americans are no more productive when delivering and
preparing this kind/quality of food, so this is unaffordable and you have to
settle for lower quality lunches (or be willing to pay more).

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potatolicious
I wasn't talking about food delivery - where I grew up you packed your own
lunches, but generally people had much better food for lunch than what you'd
see in your average North American office. Employers/schools also took more
care in providing the equipment/facilities to heat and cook lunches (far in
excess of microwaves, anyhow).

It really speaks to a cultural difference - I feel that fast food culture has
trained Americans to tolerate crappy food for lunch (or splurging on eating
out). Lunch on a work day is not something to be savored, but rather something
to be done with. IMHO there's something America can stand to learn here.

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nradov
What is there to learn? There is no way I'm going to waste my time packing a
box lunch regardless of what appliances the company provides to heat it up.

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w1ntermute
Your attitude is exactly the point. In many other countries, they _would_
spend their time packing a box lunch. As an American by birth, I didn't
understand this either until I went abroad. At first, it was simply shocking
how much time/effort went into food preparation/consumption. But over time, I
came to appreciate (and missed upon my return) the much more nuanced approach
taken to cuisine in some other countries.

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frelpen
In India, the male worker doesn't have to spend his time. It's the wife/mother
that does it. Even if the woman works, it's assumed she'll cook 3 hot meals a
day.

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blackRust
First as mentioned Indian meals take time to cook and there is a strong
emphasis on home cooked meals. There is social stigma involved in carrying the
tiffin case back.

The workforce for the dhabbawallas is cheap and they live on a fairly low
income. The way I understand it only a certain caste are dhabbawallas (correct
me if I'm wrong).

Even though the number of deliveries is huge, the people being delivered earn
considerably more than the dhabbawallas, they all have office jobs.

Having lived and experienced the Indian mechanism of things I am always
impressed when this story resurfaces, but unfortunately knowing India I am
very skeptical. They no doubt excel at what they do, but I would take the
statistics with a grain of salt.

Ask yourself how it is possible to measure such performance?

The entire mechanism is so informal and excludes any 'reporting' (in the sense
of data about efficiency) and is focused purely on delivery. I know a lot of
"certified" companies in India that lack basic factory security, hygiene and
protocols: they would fail a "real" certification.

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DufusM
I do not follow - isn't it all the more amazing that poorly paid, uneducated
workers without proper salaries are able to achieve this?

I would measure their performance by inserting random 'canary tiffins' over a
period and measuring their loss percentage. You could also track some
individual carriers and get a similar measure to combine into the previous
metric.

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ajju
The "high end tiffin set" linked from the article costs $85. You could
probably buy it for under $20 at your local Indian grocery store. If you are
in a large city it's quite likely within 10 miles of where you live/work.

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brianbreslin
are all tiffin sets metal? i'm pretty sure i've seen similar concept bento box
stacks that are plastic.

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hartror
Yeah I almost clicked _buy_ until I thought "How will I reheat these,
microwaves will not like these!"

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kamaal
So now do you understand why tiffin boxes are made of metal. Not that
microwaves can't work with plastics or all sorts of plastics.

But because most people in India can't afford to buy a microwave at the first
place.

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intended
We have plastic bowls for use in my office, and a micro. As do most of the
other offices - I am in Mumbai, and a micro isn't that hard to afford for the
middle class and many firms.

That said, there are a lot of other people who eat their food cold. This is
India, so for whatever N=true, N'=true

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jessedhillon
Does anyone else think it's ironic that a company called "Design _Within
Reach_ " sells tiffins for $85, which even in America could be had for $20.
(And in India, perhaps $10-15)

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spatulon
The point of Design Within Reach is not to sell well-designed products at low
prices, but to sell well-designed products (mainly furniture) that would
otherwise be impossible to buy through normal retail channels. "Within reach"
refers to availability, not affordability.

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marcamillion
It is things like this, why I love capitalism.

Not getting into a political debate, but which other economic system known to
man, could allow a system to be created that is more efficient than better
capitalized rivals (read FedEx, UPS, DHL) and all packages delivered by people
that are illiterate.

I think it is easy to underestimate the logistical challenges of delivering
food to 175,000 people all over a city when you have never tried it.

As someone that has worked with a friend try to coordinate lunch orders for
just 100 - 200 clients (including buying enough ingredients so there isn't
waste, to collecting all orders in time, to delivering lunches on time), let
me assure this is no easy feat.

The most ironic thing though is that I think that if you were to plot a graph
between the number of customers you have and how easy it is, I think you would
see that it initially starts a in dip (i.e. delivering and serving lunch for 1
- 10 people is relatively easy, but as you go up to say 500 people complexity
blows up and efficiency - on every scale - plummets) and then after you reach
some local maxima (when you are able to afford more people and better systems
from the revenues) efficiency starts to pick up again and the graph goes up
and to the right.

God bless the free market - wherever it is!

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anonymous246
These guys only _DELIVER_ pre-packed lunch boxes. Somebody in the lunch-
eaters' _HOUSE_ makes the food and it's picked up from there and delivered to
the lunch-eater. This is not a catering service (hence the part of of your
comment about procuring food doesn't apply).

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matdwyer
If that is the case, why do they have to bring the empty container back? Why
couldn't the person bring it home to their own house?

I understand why you would get it delivered so it is hotter/fresher... but not
the return

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ars
There is a social stigma against carrying your own food.

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antiterra
But Shahrukh Khan carries his plastic tiffin packed by Anushka Sharma to work
in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and his coworkers are in awe!

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jagira
That scene is from a small Punjabi town. It is difficult to carry lunch boxes
in Mumbai's local trains.

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raghava
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/CaseStudy...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/49/CaseStudy_MumbaiDabbawallas.pdf)

(shoddy design of ppt, you have been warned!) Page 10 onwards, their system is
described briefly.

Another study published by IIM Ahmedabad.
[http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/publications/data/2005-09-01ravic...](http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/publications/data/2005-09-01ravichandran.pdf)

HBR's case study from last year, for those who want a paid article:
[http://hbr.org/product/the-dabbawala-system-on-time-
delivery...](http://hbr.org/product/the-dabbawala-system-on-time-delivery-
every-time/an/610059-PDF-ENG)

Yet another case study: (paid article)
[http://cases.ivey.uwo.ca/cases/pages/home.aspx?Mode=showprod...](http://cases.ivey.uwo.ca/cases/pages/home.aspx?Mode=showproduct&prod=9B04D013)

A similar one, comparing NYC.
[http://etidweb.tamu.edu/classes/idis344/Is%20IT%20a%20necess...](http://etidweb.tamu.edu/classes/idis344/Is%20IT%20a%20necessity%20-%20lunch%20delivery%20system-3p.pdf)

Mumbai dabbawallahs are pretty cool in their methods! (dabba = box, wallah =
suffix, that says person)

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Cherian_Abraham
NYT wrote a pretty good article a while ago on these guys:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/business/worldbusiness/29l...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/business/worldbusiness/29lunch.html)

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srean
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N25inoCea24> youtube video of a TED talk by
the president of Mumbai Dabbawala Education Centre. Closed captioning would
have helped non-indian viewers, this commentary on the video might help
[http://www.hindu.com/mp/2011/03/14/stories/2011031451160400....](http://www.hindu.com/mp/2011/03/14/stories/2011031451160400.htm)

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stevoski
Definitely fascinating. Don't forget, however, that many of these Mumbai
dabbawallahs live a precarious existence.

Perhaps the fear of homelessness and hunger encourage the high success rate.
This is not a model I'd like to replicate in my own business.

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stretchwithme
Yeah, the last thing you want to do is give poor people opportunity.

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rokhayakebe
I am sure some techies are thinking "I can write software to optimize this
system and increase their revenue/profit. I will not charge them for the
software, and will make money from the money they save.....". Just ensure your
software can guarantee an accuracy rate close to theirs.

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eru
I bet they are employing mobile phones now.

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kamaal
That is already there from a long time. Mobile phone charges have become dirt
cheap. Sometimes free calls to some 10 numbers, billed per second(1ps per
second).

There are pre paid cards. For even 25 rupees(25 cents). You can even avail
internet access for a day! From some carriers. I hope you are getting a
glimpse of how messy the market is here.

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buckwild
I totally remember seeing these dudes when I visited India. Dabbawallah
roughly translates to "box guy" (or in context, "lunchbox guy"). They also
have these guys called subgiewallahs who are basically walking farmers
markets...

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trickjarrett
I'm reading "The Starfish and the Spider" right now, though I'm early into the
book, this system fascinates me. I find the illiteracy which both videos
touched on equally fascinating as the system evolved around the workers'
abilities rather than finding workers able to fit the system.

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blocke
Fascinating article and videos. Thanks for sharing.

Chaotic yet organized systems like this fascinate me.

