Business houses desire to identify the values on which a lasting business can be founded. Shrinivas Pandit, a veteran HR professional, too attempts to find out those values by studying Mumbai's, by now internationally famous, Dabawalas - a 115-year-old business enterprise. The organisation structure of Mumbai's dabawalas who collects home cooked food from homes and delivers them to respective offices during lunch have been the object of various studies.
To most of us it would seem to be a simple, no frills delivery service, but hold your breath and consider the numbers that we are dealing with here; the Dabalwalas collect and deliver 200,000 such lunches every day to people within a 60km radius within a 3 hour time period. Because they collect and return the empty boxes too, this amounts to around 400,000 transactions per day. As for their delivery method, they use people powered hand carts and the public railway system. And the kind of workforce behind this gigantic operations game – a 5000 strong team of dedicated and loyal semi literates!
By any stretch of imagination this simple business is actually extremely complicated.
It is not possible to list all of the lessons that can be extrapolated from the way they do business, but one that sticks in the mind and is a salutary lesson for all service providers is: “……..if you change just enough, you achieve embracive happiness.” With an error rate of one in 16 million transactions, they have clocked in a six sigma performance (99.999999%) without any technological backup. Dabawalas work as a Trust and each one of them is a shareholder to the Rs. 500 million turnover. Thus each one of them is self employed. They work as a team dependent on each other, knowing very well that unless the team works smoothly, they cannot earn a living. What is more fascinating is that an organization of 5000 people has no strike record!!!!!!
The association of dabawalas has a 13 member Governing Council that includes the President, the Vice-President, General Secretary and nine Directors. Under this body are the group leaders who manage the 5000 members of the society.
Each group leader manages 25-30 dabawalas. They are responsible for business development and continuance as well as customer satisfaction. Each group is almost an entrepreneur in its own way. The groups generate their own revenue and manage day-to-day functioning, including arranging for substitutes. Thus each group is a Strategic Business Unit (SBU).
These SBUs collaborate to get new clients. Knowing the operational areas of each group they share information on clients - a superb example of competitive collaboration. This is possible because the common thread between each group is ‘delivery’. Even though the performance of dabawalas depends upon team performance there is scope for individual improvement too. Each dabawala has to exercise extra skill and effort to convert the process into deliverable. The system is built on the collaboration between deliverables and group effort. No single Dabawala can succeed in achieving his target without the help of his group and chain.
The cardinal principle is that the dabba has to be delivered on time, within those three hours, without any excuses. When a dabawala is absent the others share his responsibilities. The whole organization works on the principle of shared responsibility and not allowing the team performance to drop. It is not that problems do not arise, but team work being the quintessence of their job they have also learnt to sort them out.
The Dabawalas have to constantly keep pace with the rapid advancement in technology – as any business would need to do and here lies their forte. With the introduction of faster trains they had to find a way to keep pace with them while keeping an eye on costs. They couldn’t afford motorised transport, due to the huge cost escalation that would have taken place, and had to instead use bicycles. Using bicycles they picked up their collection speed – relying on raw human power to give them that competitive edge. For the dabawalas, monetary satisfaction may not be very high but what matters more to them is the satisfaction of keeping the customers happy at a bearable cost.
In the competitive world, everybody is in a race to win, which has made the work life rhythm go haywire. The stress levels have gone up, causing health hazards for large sections of people.
At the same time, services have become prohibitive in cost, unreliable and inefficient for customers at the middle and the bottom of the social pyramid but it can be reoriented on an architecture of values that nurtures the genuine service mentality. The Dabawalas ability to identify this opportunity ahead of others, and their loyalty to old customers with a dependable delivery service, have provided them a lasting business.
Ref: Dabawalas by Shrinivas Pandit (Tata McGrawHill)