Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad   

Business lessons, packed in a `dabba'

Staff Reporter

ACHIEVERS ALL: Raghunath Dhondiba Megde, president, Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Supply Charity Trust (centre), and Gangaram Laxman Talekar, secretary, interact with an ISB student in Hyderabad on Saturday.

HYDERABAD: Students of Indian School Business (ISB) here learnt the wonders that simplicity can do at a presentation and interactive session with the Mumbai Dabbawalas on "A grassroots approach to logistics".

About 5,000 `dabbawalas' carry two lakh lunch boxes in cycles, local trains and carts over a distance of 70 km. The boxes change hands eight times a day in the busy metropolis.

The `dabbas' are taken from customers' homes to their offices and returned the same day.

The history

The fabulous process was launched by Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association in 1890. The average literacy rate of `dabbawalas' is 8th grade schooling but the error is one in 16 million, getting the `dabbawala' "Six Sigma" rating.

Cyberspace

The details of logistics and supply chain management for 114 years -- sans any technology -- baffled the audience at Khemka Auditorium in ISB's campus. ISB students absorbed the lecture in rapt attention, furiously scribbling notes as Raghunath Dhondiba Megde, president, Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Supply Charity Trust and Gangaram Laxman Talekar, secretary, presented case studies.

Mr. Raghunath's narration of the nitty-gritty of procedures for coding the `dabbas' and the massive logistics for transporting them held the students in awe. They just lapped up Mr. Gangaram's presentation in Mumbaiyya Hindi.

Their website www.mydabbawalas.com is extremely popular and starting with a whopping 75,000 hits a day, has stabilised at around 10,000 hits a day. An SMS service too was started a week ago.

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