Karnataka - Belgaum   

Learning from ‘dabbawalas’

Belgaum: The community of management students, trainees and teachers, besides entrepreneurs have suddenly started looking up to the dabbawalas of Mumbai, thanks to the star value the poor yet world’s most successful entrepreneurs have started enjoying after Prince Charles visited them in 2003.

Everybody is making a beeline for knowing the secret behind the success of the 125-year-old “dabbawala industry”, which has become an integral part of Mumbai’s culture. Even management institutions are taking a fresh look at this hitherto ignored industry. The industry employs nearly 5,000 “dabbawalas” or “tiffinwalas”, most of them with no formal education, to cater to the needs of about two lakh persons every day in Mumbai.

Belagum-based KLE Society’s College of Business Administration (CBA), which decided to provide a unique opportunity to its students and those from other management institutions and industrialists to know about the “dabbawalas”, invited the Dabbawala Association’s president Raghunath Metage and honorary director Manish Tripathi for a presentation here on Saturday.

The event was part of the CBA’s lecture series programme with the theme “Management by common sense”.

However, the response to the event was poor. Thanks to the registration fee of Rs. 500.

Some students and entrepreneurs returned on learning about the registration of fee, terming it “unfair”.

The lecture was inaugurated by Mr. Metage. Principal of CBA P.R. Katkol and KLE Society directors were present.

Later, Mr. Tripathi made an audio-visual presentation and attributed the success of the “dabbawala industry” to principles of “work is worship” and “utmost punctuality.” The presentation was followed by an interaction session.

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