Case Study on Dabbawallah of Mumbai

Submitted by : RIL -MDP
Taruna Upadhyaya
Pankaj Nimavat
Siddhartha Chaturvedi

Assignment Questions for the case:
1. What is the basis for the success of the Dabbawallahs of Mumbai? What factors need to be in place for a service like the Dabbawallahs to work effectively?
Basis for the success of the Dabbawallahs of Mumbai is that they were all working for a single purpose of delivering a dabba in time for the customer’s lunch. Several distinctive and supporting success factors include:
Dabbawallah Profile.
• All the dabbawallah were from the same geographical area and spoke the same language. This gave a kind of cultural profile to the Trust and high degree of cohesion amongst each other.
• High disciplined staff to ensure timely delivery. No strikes reported so far.
• Each dabbawallah considered themselves as entrepreneur and not employee which led to the high level of ownership and cohesive environment to work in.

Decentralization
• Each group was responsible for the smooth functioning of the day to day activities entirely independent of the trust.
• There were no centralized records of incomes and expenses for group clients, dabbawallah or Mukadams.
• Decentralization had been instrumental to building cohesion within each group, and operational autonomy helped to provide focus on delivery effectiveness and improvement.

Perceived Equality
• Each Dabbawallahs in the group earned equal remuneration; irrespective of the seniority and the amount of time and effort put.
• This system was leveler that helped forge equal relationships among the dabbawallah.
• The financial equality was leveled with the distribution of the work load with physical work being handled by younger generation over the older dabbawallah.

Delivery reliability
• There was no governing hierarchy that defined working relationships