Customers shall not remain hungry’— this is the mission that drives the day-to-day activities of the Mumbai Dabbawalas. Subodh Sangle and Nitin Sawant representing Dabbawalas shared this with the budding managers of IIM Raipur during an interactive session held over the functioning of the Dabbawalas here on Saturday.
‘Nutan Tiffin Suppliers Charitable Trust’ and ‘Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association’ are the official bodies representing the Mumbai Dabbawalas. The students of IIM Raipur listened to them intently and asked several questions related to the Mumbai Dabbawalas’ business model.
Sangle and Sawant discussed their management principles such as keeping operational costs to minimum, seeking co-operation and proper coordination from inside of the organization and at the same time keeping eyes and ears open for competition outside the organisation. Sangle explained the flow logic of the operations right from collecting the lunch boxes (dabbas) to sorting them, uploading them into the trains, downloading them from the trains to the stations and finally sorting again and distributing it to the various destinations. He illustrated their unique coding system for minimization of errors.
Apart from their unique way of operating business processes, the Mumbai Dabbawalas have certain unspoken principles like bonding and preserving the Indian family values of having lunch hot. Also unique to their method of operating is that they have zero level fuel consumption and standard prices for everyone.
Sawant stressed that discipline and humility were the driving factors of their success. More importantly, for any business to be successful it is essential to be clear about what is the mission which is to be accomplished. Their parting message to the students was – ‘Consumer is not the Raja. He is the Maharaja. Always carry out your operations keeping that in mind.’