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.
Fedex and UPS would likely reach similar levels of efficiency if they picked up from and delivered to the same locations every day. The dabba wallahs would likely have a lot more errors if you wanted lunch on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday on the last week of the month and lunch on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday on the other weeks. Or, for that matter, only on demand when you call that morning to arrange a pickup.
Also some of the comments in the article mention that one of the keys to their success is getting rid of bad customers. Is the customer always several minutes late in having the meal ready to transport when they go to pick it up? If so, they're holding up the line... require that it be prepared on-time or stop transporting their meals.
Except that Fedex and UPS will never be able to beat that price. For a simple reason Fedex and UPS do it for profit and Dabbawallah's do it for poverty.
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).
Because not only do they have to get lunch to 175,000 people, they also have to pick it up!
You are right, I glossed over that fact.
I was just using my experience as a vague point of reference for how complicated such a business is - even though on the outside it seems like it might be simple.
It is the opposite for me. How bad would it have to get for me to run around in the rain on a bicycle to deliver someone's home-cooked lunch to their office? Pretty bad. I would have to be pretty deep in poverty before I would start considering that. I guess one person looks at this as the triumph of free enterprise, another looks at it as how desperate the situation can get for some. If it is the only job they can get and they have hungry children at home, you bet they will get that 6 sigmas of reliability...
Hrmm...isn't that how the free-market works? It is precisely because you have no alternatives why you choose the work you do.
If you can be a surgeon, you will be. If you can't, you won't.
But whatever you decide to do, you can excel at it and move up as needs be (in most free societies anyway).
You don't need to do this, so you wouldn't be their ideal delivery man. If you were, you would probably lose a few lunches and that would damage their reliability....which hurts their system and company.
So the free market has priced you out of that job - because you wouldn't likely work for the pittance these guys earn.
All of that being said, if these guys save and start to do other things, they too can eventually move up and possibly even start their own company that allows their past employer to outsource some functions to them!
That might not happen, but nothing is really stopping them (cultural nuances aside, like caste, etc.) aside from good old fashioned drive and hard work.
Edit: Plus you are missing the point. I am not saying that those delivery men are what is impressive. What is impressive is whoever put the system together that allows them to have the six sigma reliability when they are depending on thousands of illiterate men. That! is impressive....in my humble opinion.
You can say the same thing about flipping burgers at McDonald's, or dealing with annoying customers at Sears.
The service industry is an unenviable place to be in, no matter where you are. I don't particularly buy that being in the "delivering lunches in the rain" business is a good indicator of particularly disturbing poverty.
Not exactly, there is difference between offering quality of service out of professionalism and offering quality of service out of the fear that if you don't some body else will and take away your job.
And if you lose your job you have no other option but to starve(With your family and kids). Its a little bit to imagine this in the US, partly because you haven't even the outside idea what sort of poverty is there here in India.
They are not the same. And that sort of desperation can't be felt unless you are in that situation.
[edit: watched the video he says that its very hard to carry things and board trains in mumbai, thus worth it to have the tiffin returned home as well]
This is partially true. The stigma is not so much against carrying your own food, as it's against carrying the particular type of tiffin box that is shown in this video. They are quite large and bulky. Imagine, a guy in a suit, with an Attache in one hand, and the bulky tiffin box in the other.
Also, if you commute by Mumbai's local trains, it will be a nightmare to board them with the boxes.
Here's a snap taken inside a typical coach: http://www.mumbai77.com/Pictures/Gallery/displayimage.php?al...
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!