What we are learning from The Dabbawala – Fast lunch delivery in Mumbai
February 18th, 2010Lately, I’ve been studying the management system of the Dabbawala, a 125 year old lunch delivery service in Mumbai, India.
It has a network of 5000 Dabbawala who deliver lunch boxes (tiffins) across the entire city.
Some takeaways:
- Simple value proposition: a homemade lunch amongst a sea of fast food
- Six Sigma certification despite low technology (they had no website and did not use SMS until recently)
- Flat management works best: They have a 3 tier hierarchy including executives, Dabbawala managers, and Dabbawalas
- Core beliefs of hard work, pride, and entrepreneurial ownership of the business exist at all levels
- 99.99% accuracy of food deliveries
- The business enjoys a 5-10% yearly growth rate
A great recap of numbers and pictures of the Dabbawalas on SlideShare:
For the past few weeks, HeroEx has been streamlining its business. We have been working on this:
- Keeping overhead as low as possible
- Limited product offering (just the most popular items) for standard deliveries; we are still continuing custom orders for a premium price
- Recruiting more Delivery Heroes and Delivery Managers
- New set of guiding principles for Delivery Heroes and Delivery Managers
- Redesigned website: cleaner with a focus on products, Heroes, and building community
- Improving our internal management systems
- Maintaining our 100% accuracy and timeliness (1 hour) on deliveries
Thanks for your support!
Marissa
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