dabbawalas: mumbai’s best managed business english (3300002) section 2-a: comprehension passages...

Dabbawalas: Mumbai’s Best Managed Business

English (3300002)

Section 2-A: Comprehension Passages

Dabbawalas:

Mumbai’s Best Managed Business

Amberish Diwanji

Prepared and Presented by

Imran Khan Mh. Yusufzay(Asst. Prof. in English)

Om Institute of Engineering & Technology, Junagadh.

Dictionary Definition

• Personality

The combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinctive character:

• Management

The process of dealing with or controlling things or people:

Main Points to highlight…

• Who is Dabbawala in Mumbai?

• History of Dabbawalas.

• Why Dabbawala?

• Dabbawals’ Daily Schedule / How they work?

• What makes Dabbawalas so unique?

• Their Achievements

Dabbawalas’ Story• We are Dabbawala, (one who carries the box),

in the Indian city of Mumbai. We carry and deliver freshly made food from customer’s home in a lunch box (Dabba) and deliver it to offices.

• It may sound simple, but it’s not.

Our Story

• It is actually a highly specialized trade that has evolved in its current form over a century and has become integral to Mumbai’s culture.

Information taken from Dabbawalas’ official website http://mumbaidabbawala.in/about-us/

Who is Dabbawala in Mumbai?

• Dabba means a Tiffin box

• Dabbawals are the people who deliver home cooked meals to the workers working in different organizations of Mumbai at their workplaces and return empty Tiffin boxes to their homes, in some cases, caterers.

• They are not caterers; they deliver home cooked food to the workers from their home to their office.

Who is Dabbawala in Mumbai?

• Total there are 5,000 Dabbawalas

• Each one carries at least 40 Dabbas

• So total they deliver 2,00,000 dabbas everyday!

• For this they charge 300 to 350 Rs only per month

• 2,00,000 X 300 = 6,0000000 / 5000 = 12,000

Who is Dabbawala in Mumbai?Often house wives send notes to their hubbies in boxes…

History of Dabbawalas

• It all started about 125 years back when a Parasi banker wanted to have home cooked food regularly in office and gave this responsibility to the first ever Dabbawala. Other people also liked the idea and the demand for Dabba delivery soared.

• Registered as Charitable Trust in 1956

History of Dabbawalas

• Migration to the city had just begun & people wanted home cooked food

• As the city grew, the demand for dabba delivery grew too. Our forefathers had the vision to create the Dabba coding system that’s going on strong even today.

• People from different states in Mumbai (like South Indians and Gujaraties) want their traditional food, Dabbawalas’ service began to fill this growing need..

Raghunath MedgePresident, Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust

Why should Dabbawala carry your Tiffin?1. Person has to leave early in the

morning for his office, so it is bit difficult for a mother, wife or sister to make Tiffin so early in the morning

2. Home cooked food has love and affection of mother or wife!

3. Traffic in Mumbai local train makes it difficult for you to carry a Tiffin

Traffic in Mumbai Local Train

Dabbawals’ Daily Schedule

How they work and manage time?

Task 1The process beings early in the morning. Cooked food is picked up from houses and caterers by dabbawallahs and taken to the nearest railway station

Task 2 There, the different tiffin boxes are sorted out for specific destination stations and loaded onto large, rectangular trays accordingly.

Task 3

These trays carrying 40 boxes travel in local trains down to various stations.

Uploading Dabbas on Mumbai local trains

Task 4 At each station there are another set of dabbawallahs who quickly take the dabbas meant to be distributed in that area and push in dabba meant for another station.

Please Note

• A mumbai local halts at a station for

about 20 seconds or less and thus

the dabbawallahs have to work with

precision and speed.

Task 5

At each station, the boxes are once more sorted or localities and offices and taken by handcarts or sometimes carried by individuals.

0% use of technology, they use hand carts

Or they use bicycle !

Dabbawalas: Mumbai’s Best Managed BusinessSolid Physical Stamina – 40 Dabbas per tray

“We carry up to 35 kg for distance of a couple of kilometers,” points out Medge.

Task 6 The boxes are placed in the offices’ reception area by 12:30 pm and are picked up from the same spot by the deliverer a couple of hours later.

Task 7The whole process then starts again in the reverse. The boxes are picked up from the offices, taken to the nearest station and sorted for their journey home.

Let us see their line of action….

Cooked food Cooked food collected collected

from homefrom home

Taken to the Taken to the nearest railway nearest railway

station station

Sorting & Sorting & loaded on loaded on

traystrays

Uploading in Uploading in the local the local

train train

Another group Another group of DW collects of DW collects

on the next on the next station station

Again sorting Again sorting according to according to destination destination

loaded onto loaded onto hand carts or hand carts or

bicycle bicycle

Placed in Placed in the office the office

Placed at Placed at destination destination

homehome

Taken to the Taken to the nearest railway nearest railway

station station

Sorting & Sorting & loaded on loaded on

traystrays

Uploading in Uploading in the local the local

train train

Another group Another group of DW collects of DW collects

on the next on the next station station

Again sorting Again sorting according to according to destination destination

loaded onto loaded onto hand carts or hand carts or

bicycle bicycle

Collected Collected Dabba from Dabba from

office office

Meet Dabbawala in Mumbai

What makes Dabbawalas so unique?

• Honesty and integrity • Regularity and punctuality everyday• Discipline and Time Management• Sharp memory – No use of technology• Pride for their work • Stick to time and work is worship• Customer is God! (Example of Prince Charles)

What makes Dabbawalas so unique?

• Accuracy, commitment and team work

• Error is horror

• Precision and speed

• Solid stamina, man power and unity

• They are illiterate yet they understand coding system for fault less deliver

• They are the best in time management and perfection

• Even in heavy rain of Mumbai, their service continues…

• All these points are applicable to us also

Even in heavy rain of Mumbai, their service continues…

Dabbawalas’ Ethics & Discipline

• No alcohol / drinking / smoking is allowed during working hours

• ID card and white Gandhi topi is must on duty

• Leave without prior notice is not allowed

• No Dabbawala ever so misbeviour with the customer or any of his family member while collecting or dropping the Dabba…

Code of Conduct

• 500 Rs fine for drinking on duty

• 100 Rs fine for smoking on duty

• 25 Rs fine for not wearing cap

• 1000 Rs fine for leave without prior notice, Sacked if repeated more than 2 times

Everyday Work & Perfection

• Every day 1,75,000 to 2,00,000 Tiffin boxes are delivered

• Color codes are used for faultless delivery

• These code may baffle (confuse) a cryptographer and uneducated dabbawalas can understand these codes!

Coding System• The Coding system evolved through various

stages with time. In the beginning it was simple colour coding. Now Mumbai is a widely spread metro with 3 local train routes. Our coding has also evolved into alpha numeric characters.

• Information taken from official Dabbawalas’ official website

http://mumbaidabbawala.in/about-us/

Coding System

Short Film on Mumbai Dabbawala

Not Employees but it’s a Trust

• All are share-holders and they share earnings• No unions and strikes since 1890• Trust provides schools for the

children and health care in emergency to its members

Secret of their unity!

• All Dabbawalas are tight knit (well organized) because all come from same region, Pune district in Maharashtra.

• They join outsider as an employ on a fixed salary, after he wins their trust, they make him a share holder

Secret of their unity!

• All the share holders have common customs & traditions and they worship Vithoba of Pandharpur

• They fast on Prabhodini Ekadashi

Why this business is most befitting in Mumbai?

• Mumbai’s geography is like this: All the residences are in the north and offices in the south so this makes Dabbawala’s job very simple

• In Delhi, this business didn’t work as it is a circular city

Mumbai’s Geography matches

Mumbai Delhi

Dabbawalas’ Achievements

Prince Charles (the King of London) meets Dabbawalas

Mr Richard Branson,

the founder of Virgin Group,

Mr Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, travelled with Dabbawalas like a Dabbawala and delivered a huge tiffin to his own employees at Virgin, Mumbai.

Bollywood film actor Baman Irani (C) promotes a business channel's reality show “The Pitch” with Mumbai’s Dabbawala (Tiffin service) in Mumbai on October 13, 2010.

Karisma Kapoor Unveils Tempo Products with Dabbawalas - Pics

Dr. Pawan Agarval has done Ph.D. on Dabbawalas

Dabbawalas’ lectures in Prestigious Institutes & B-Schools

Raghunath Medge is invited as a guest of honor at Business School

Mr. Medge was invited to deliver a talk in IIM, Lucknow

Dabbawalas with the students of IIM, Raipur.

iLEAD In Association With Shark’s International Hosted A Talk Show On “Mumbai Dabbawalas”

Dabbawals with Volkswagen

Dabbawalas’ Achievements• World Record in Time Management!

• Name in Guiness World Record!

• Eminent personalities like Prince Charles

have visited Dabbawalas & Prince even

invited them to his wedding.

• Registered with Repley’s “Believe it or not”

Ripley's Believe It or Not!• Ripley's Believe It or Not! is a franchise,

founded by Robert Ripley, which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims. The Believe It or Not panel proved popular and was later adapted into a wide variety of formats, including radio, television, comic books, a chain of museums and a book series.

Dabbawalas’ Achievements• Forbes (an American Magazine) gave this

services its highest quality rating of Sigma 6, which means that per million transactions, there is just an error of one. Dabbawala got Sigma 6 without any application

• Documentary called “Dabbawalas, Mumbai’s unique lunch service” by two Dutch Film Makers

Dabbawalas’ Achievements• In 1998 two Dutch filmmakers, Jascha De Wilde and Chris

Relleke, made a documentary called "Dabbawalas,

Mumbai's unique lunch service" and in 2001, the Christian

Science Monitor, the Boston-based newspaper, covered the

Dabbawalas in an article called "Fastest Food: It's Big Mac

vs. Bombay's Dabbawallahs.“

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2006/06/27/Bombay-Dabbawalas-go-

high-tech/UPI-40191151437008/

Only Mumbaikars alone in the world would have the option of eating home made food in the offices without bother of having to carry a cumbersome (troublesome) lunchbox…. Credit goes to Dabbawalas….

Meet Mumbai Dabbawala on www.mumbaidabbawala.in

References

•Dabbawalas’ Official Website :

www.mumbaidabbawala.in

•Active English, Diploma Engineering Sem I,

•www.google.com

Thank you

Imran Khan

M.A., M.Phil., B.Ed. in English

Asst. Prof. in English

Om Engineering College, Junagadh.

www.imkeng.wordpress.com

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