> “We've known this person so long we know he'll do a proper job."
> The delivery schedule also has built-in buffers. If a delivery is due at 13:00, the dabbawala will aim for around 12:00 [...] For every 15 to 20 dabbawalas there is also always someone on stand-by in case one of them gets delayed.
> At 12:45 a dabbawala races around the corner on a bike and rushes shouting into an office building. [...] The dabbawala was late by his own standards but the customer was probably never aware of the hiccup, he says.
> A dabbawalas’ commitment to the job is partly because it pays well – roughly 12,000 rupees (£140) a month, a good salary in India for what is essentially unskilled labour. The fame of the dabbawalas also gives the job a certain prestige.
> And as a cooperative all dabbawalas are equal partners with supervisors called mukadams who are elected.
It seems like there's no major secret here. The key to achieving such things is... surprise surprise... treating your workers fairly and paying them well so they actually give a shit about their job, and feel appreciated and proud of what they do. The same would actually translate to many other industries.
The food delivery startups could achieve the same if they paid their delivery drivers fairly (at the moment most don't even make minimum wage - compared to the dabbawalas’ "good salary") instead of pissing away their money into marketing/advertising or into someone's pocket, whether greedy investors or "engineers" to build a blockchain-based, Kubernetes-powered microservices playground.
A coop operating alone in this space, or competing with other coops, would definitely make a profit. But a coop can't compete with a VC backed startup that will use every legal, illegal, ethical and unethical trick in the book it can get away with to, to destroy its competitors.
> But a coop can't compete with a VC backed startup that will use every legal, illegal, ethical and unethical trick in the book it can get away with to, to destroy its competitors.
Yes, and I think aspect of capitalism is under-discussed. The conventional narrative is that it doesn't matter how much wealth somebody else (or some other company) has. You can compete on your own merit.
But companies like Uber and other VC-backed "unicorns" show otherwise. They can afford to give away their product for free on the back of money that they didn't earn in any meaningful way. And it completely breaks the model.
>The key to achieving such things is... surprise surprise... treating your workers fairly and paying them well so they actually give a shit about their job
Easier said than done.
Not that I disagree, but business models like these are difficult in more developed countries. It's the same reason you will find middle class people in many less developed countries with domestic staff. The wealth divide between the middle class and poor is so extreme in places like India, that you can afford to charge your regular customers enough money to pay poor employees a "good" wage. "Good" in this case is of course very relative. Relative to many other poor people that have no job at all.
Indeed. Better economic opportunities and higher levels of general education make it hard to employ people and make money off this work at the same time. At least where I live in the US the gig platforms are staffed by people who can't hold down traditional employment for various reasons, and even with the below-minimum wage these services by and large do not really make money.
The flip side of this trend is the ubiquity of vending machines in Japan, which have the advantage of requiring no sales staff. This is very useful in a country where the labor force is shrinking and demand for low-skilled workers outstrips supply.
>The food delivery startups could achieve the same if they paid their delivery drivers fairly (at the moment most don't even make minimum wage - compared to the dabbawalas’ "good salary")
A quick data check suggests that a software engineer in Mumbai can easily make literally ten times this "good salary". Would you consider paying food delivery workers in London 10% of an software engineer's pay packet a "good salary"? Fair treatment?
Some crude calculations on my part suggest that it would be well below minimum wage in the UK. Is it possible that there might be more going on than "good salary"? Other commenters point out that there's a deep gulf in expected living conditions that enables such a low level of pay to be a "good salary".
Taken together, these suggest to me that this is a model that exploits extreme poverty and inequality. One that perhaps we should be glad cannot be replicated in many other places.
>The food delivery startups could achieve the same if they paid their delivery drivers fairly
They could, but they do everything to give the perception that food delivery is cheap.
UberEats takes a 30% cut of the restaurant price. Most of them don't increase their prices in response. They really should consider it (and fortunately, some do), it devalues their offering (and restaurants already work with razor thin margins).
Same thing for their drivers salaries. Better to drive it into the ground than paying them a living wage and see a slower adoption as a result.
Not sure the quotes around engineers are needed. I have zero sympathy for most of these companies but it is still an engineering challenge to do food delivery at scale.
I looked at ordering some white castle for pick up today. There 5 dollar combination i normally Get was 7.50 plus convenience charges. Similarly, i looked at ordering delivery sushi and it was close to 50% more not including charges Friday. There’s not a lot of options here in Detroit, but, it seems like the platform charges are getting transferred to the customer.
Dabbawalas are more involved with transporting home cooked food to the worker. The worker leaves early in the morning and some time later the spouse will have a hot meal packed up. The dabbawala will come pick it up and aggregate orders going to common destinations, move it by train, etc. I presume Swiggy is only for restaurant cooked food.
Secondly the dabbawala jobs are more like a stable union job. You don't get the top money but everyone looks after each other. Of course with time customer preferences may change towards restaurant food. Or maybe workers start using plastic containers and microwaves.
"The dabbawalas have deeper reasons for doing it. Serving their customers is like serving their god.”
It could be because they see their purpose as delivering food to people on time and it doesn't seem like the nascent services have figured out how to do that well at scale - thus they may make more over there but are less fulfilled in their life mission?
Swiggy and other delivery startups are more demanding in work hours (to make good money you need to do late nights weekends etc) and also needs you be able to drive a scooter . Also these startups need you to be able use their mobile app, maps and gps and find the customer these require literacy and few other skills Dabbawalas may not have readily.
They don't live in Mumbai usually and if they do in the slums. They live on the outskirts and commute by Mumbai Local.
In main areas of Mumbai that amount may not even fetch a small sized windowless room (no kitchen, or living space - just a room and a common washroom outside) and I am not even talking about "posh" Mumbai.
I took the fact that it appears to be a good wage from the article; I am not familiar with the local market so I couldn't double-check that myself. However, they do appear to be thriving and providing a good service despite the local companies supposedly paying more so something doesn't add up. If the companies truly paid more then the whole system would breakdown as all their couriers would jump ship to the delivery startups.
No the secret is to have a caste of workers with low expectations, lack of better opportunities, and high work ethics - grounding it in religion and making it a 'mission' instead of a job helps.
Dabbawalas are getting paid in good salary because they are a lot more efficient comparing to Uber drivers.
From other reports / business review I am reading, there are about 200k customers with 5k Dabbawalas workers. That is avg 40 lunch deliveries per person. That is a LOT more efficient than Uber drivers.
The Dabbawalas is more efficient because:
- built on top of public transit: dramatically lower cost, no need to pay for gas
- have a pre set schedule and demand / not on-demand: enable huge supply chain optimization.
1. They don't make the food, they only transport it. Payment of taxes or GST on food delivered is between the food maker and the food receiver – dabbawala is not involved.
2. Article claims roughly 200,000 deliveries per day.
3a. Cost of each delivery is Rs. 800 per month / 24 working days = approx Rs. 33 (or less than half a dollar) per delivery. Normally the delivery involves a pick up as well (previous day's container is picked up along with today's delivery).
3b. Value of food content is irrelevant – it can be super expensive or dirt cheap, dabbawalas only care that it is packed in certain types of containers.
>"The new wave of food-delivery start-ups wants to know how they do it."
Miniscule labor costs and scant workers rights.
The "gig" economy is simply replicating in the west what has already existed in highly stratified societies for generations now that wealth inequality has finally reached a point where it can be profitable.
I visited Pakistan a few years ago, my homeland, after some 20 years of being in the states.
I was being driven around by my 18 year old cousin. At some point, just completely randomly, some youngin' - I would estimate about 15 years of age, entered the car, in the backseat. My Urdu was a little off, I couldn't make out exactly what had happened, I assumed the guy was my cousin's friend.
No, it turns out he was just doing a chore for a few pennies.
It's the strangest fucking thing, dealing with these people. They're always there, just one command away. Being in America, I say my thank yous to cashiers or anyone of lesser means, exchange pleasantries, I never see them as lesser humans than me. But in that part of the world, if you look a certain way and dress a certain way, these folks will come to you for chores for a few pennies -- and they will almost present themselves as if they are lesser persons than you. And I would be speechless in those situations, I wouldn't know what to do or say. That properly fucked me in the head for a good while.
You put it so well. I am from India and what you said has been my experience too. If you have less money, your worth falls so much that you are barely considered human. I grew up in Mumbai as a high schooler and saw abject poverty. I have also lived in USA for close to 20 years and when I go back to India I don't remember the mental tools I used to use to harden myself against the massive injustice that cannot be ignored but one must to stay sane.
e.g. My family and I were driving in a Maruthi 800 car and we stopped at the light. A little boy of 8 years came upto another car in front with a bunch of roses. He gave on rose to the person in the car but by then the light turned green and everybody started driving. The boy ran after this car with all his might he could gather from every single fiber in his body so he could collect the pennies. I remember my parents and I looking at this scene with sadness.
When I used to travel by the suburban trains, I used to see little babies begging. I later learnt that the beggars were part of a much larger and powerful begging network. The adults would lay their (supposed) child with a big ulcer popping out the child's stomach so the passers-by would have pity and drop some change. I remember wanting to commit suicide after seeing such scenes. I used to look away just so I did not have to face the obvious questions that arise. It's a cruel world without money and no wonder we are all grabbing at whatever we can grab at driven by fear that one day we could end up in penury. It is the same in the USA sadly. A family is just one major sickness away from bankruptcy. The financially weak and people without power suffer everywhere.
That’s interesting because as an Australian who has also been living in the USA for as long as you, the USA feels to me stratified the the way you describe. Tipping, the way people treat cleaners and other low status workers feels consistent with how people are treated when I am in India (my mother’s homeland not mine).
At least one small thing is better there: I visited my cousin at work and there was a man in the lift who pushed the buttons for us. My cousin explained that he had been the lift operator before the automatic lift was installed and rather than have him lose his job they continued employing him. I’m not sure that would happen in modern America any more...or Australia for that matter.
>>Being in America, I say my thank yous to cashiers or anyone of lesser means, exchange pleasantries, I never see them as lesser humans than me.
So I'm not saying that you do obviously, but when I visited America I found it really jarring how all hospitality people were behaving almost like....servants. I saw what felt like a huge amount of fake smiles and pleasantries , just to make sure I feel happy as a customer, and presumably an attempt to get a larger tip. It felt like people were avoiding direct eye contact and their body language seemed as if they were naturally assuming a position of a "lesser" status just to keep you happy.
Again, that's just from a few visits over to America - maybe I was just very unlucky. But I had it every time in different cities.
There are a lot of things in US that feel like pleasantries - the tipping culture promotes this sort of thing.
As an American, I disagree with the "servant" class attitude that you found in America. It is completely opposite, in fact, in a bad way sometimes. Middleclass Americans feel entitled about being able to do certain things and if that privilege is taken away, they will create chaos. In general, Americans have enterprising values - work hard, be pragmatic, meritocracy, avoid formalities and generally have intense sense of optimism. Americans engage in risk taking, especially in the upper middle class.
It is not a perfect place, rather a mosiac of various cultures. I've visited India (spent 9 months) and the diversity in India is quite staggering - literally every state is like its own country. However, there is little race diversity and internationalisation. America is a land of immigrants, good tolerance to other cultures and the idea of individualism is deeply rooted in the soul of this nation. Korean person could be found eating at an Egyptian restaurant, both the person and the restaurant owners are Americans. In India, I found almost casual racism - literally everywhere from advertisements to how the North (light skinned) treats the South (dark skinned) Indians.
Of all nations I've had the chance to explore and understand - Japanese culture has the most "hierarchical" notion of society. I've worked with Japanese engineers who are afraid to speak up or mess up in order to avoid pissing off their superiors. The "servant" attitude you speak of - that is fully manifested in Japan - as a lifelong duty to serve others, excel in what you do and expect nothing in return (no tips in Japan). I admire certain aspects of it and it creates a peaceful harmony in the society. There are Japanese terms to explain it more clearly, I can't recall them.
>servants. I saw what felt like a huge amount of fake smiles and pleasantries
That's not the service industry, that's just America in general compared to many other countries. Many cultures find it weird, but it's just how things are here.
>It felt like people were avoiding direct eye contact and their body language seemed as if they were naturally assuming a position of a "lesser" status just to keep you happy.
I've never noticed that despite working in a service industry for several years during college. I think this was just a cultural misunderstanding combined with confirmation bias.
Have you visited any non American cities? As someone of Asian descent, hospitality workers are expected to have absolute deference to you, and expectation of a tip. They are expected to defer to your whim because they are below you in "status: as a worker not a customer. I've worked in both culinary buisiness in Asia and America. America was hard work, but it was nowhere as near as mentally and physically strenuous as the places owned by Asian owners
Something similar happened to me when I was in India. During peak traffic hours, this lady clothed entirely in black was pestering my taxi driver to buy something. Turns out the lady was a gypsy, and my superstitious cab driver begged me to buy her wares, otherwise he feared she would place a hex on him and his family. It’s really quite colorful in these localities.
> my superstitious cab driver begged me to buy her wares, otherwise he feared she would place a hex on him and his family
My guess would be there was no superstition involved, they just thought you could afford it, and he was trying to help her out by getting a sale for her. Heck, maybe he even got a commission.
I had something similar happen somewhere in India (I forget where, but probably Mumbai or Delhi), except we were in a taxi!
My wife and I were in the back row, when the driver suddenly stopped, and a guy got in the front seat... and then 2 more got in the back, one at either side of us (which yes, was extremely uncomfortable). Nobody said a word the whole time. The driver drove off, and dropped all of them off a short time later.
Ah yes you were charged the white tax. Mumbai taxis are actually famous for going by the meter while pretty much taxis in other metro Indian cities dont.
Since you dont look "Indian" the taxis know they can get more money out of you.
Next time before you enter the taxi try saying "Meter say chalo" which in Hindi means go by the meter.
Yes, I/we were charged this tax on more or less every rick/taxi ride.
If I even asked for the meter (in English, mind), rather than negotiated a price beforehand, we invariably got a rigged meter anyway! I'll try it in Hindi if I ever get back though!
Like, you could not understand why someone would act like that? You had difficulty reconciling your expectations of human society with your experience in Pakistan? What changed?
I meant it was shocking to see humans behaving so subserviently, being so at terms with their situation: making pennies for chores and yet being so hardworking. I don't want to call it slavery, but it's something around there.
Nah Dabbawalas are unionized and they effectively have control over what to charge their customers. The costs are low because, unlike other food-delivery startups, they are able to make money because of their ability to execute a hub and spoke model. Since they operate only during lunch time, and serve dense residential and office locations in Mumbai, they are able to aggregate orders both temporally and spatially.
Havin a hub-and-spoke model is the only way to make money if you are a logistics company. Grubhub wrote a good bit about this in their investor letter. [1]
> A dabbawalas’ commitment to the job is partly because it pays well – roughly 12,000 rupees (£140) a month, a good salary in India for what is essentially unskilled labour. The fame of the dabbawalas also gives the job a certain prestige. This can lead to perks like discounted mobile phone subscriptions and scholarships for a dabbawala’s children funded by organisations keen to be associated with the respected network.
> According to Sangle, the healthy-eating craze in India is good for dabbawalas as food companies are turning to them for delivery. Profits from these newer ventures are bumping the dabbawalas’ salaries up from 12,000 to 20,000 rupees a month, he says.
The labor is cheap but the work pays relatively well. As Hans Rosling says in his book _Factfulness_: things can be both bad and better.
For a nice introduction to the subject of Mumbai
Dabawallahs I would strongly recommend watching "The Lunchbox" [1] starring the late Irfan Khan. A great actor tragically taken from us at a relatively young age.
+1. A slow, naturalistic movie that's also conventionally entertaining. Plus, as a timely feature, one of the protagonists spends a bunch of time standing on crowded trains, sitting in a crowded office, and eating lunch in a crowded canteen.
While it is always good for executives to learn how long-established and well-run things work, it looks to me a lot in this system depends on the social context of Mumbai (or other big cities in India): big income disparity and the prevalence of stay at home domestic partners. I mean the first example in the article is a stock broker who has food delivered from home, cooked by their spouse.
Why would this work in countries with a set minimum wage, double income households, and restaurants that have to be able to maintain their margins after delivery fees (something that domestic partners do not have to do)?
It stars recently passed away actor Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur (she's in Homeland), and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. They are among the finest from here. It has Max Richter's music and is on Indian Netflix (not sure about rest of the world).
> A dabbawalas’ commitment to the job is partly because it pays well – roughly 12,000 rupees (£140) a month, a good salary in India for what is essentially unskilled labour. The fame of the dabbawalas also gives the job a certain prestige.
Similar to being a bicycle messenger. You could make $20 an hour if you're efficient, which is more than working at a big box chain or delivering for a ridesharing service, and it has prestige.
It arrives hot. It is prepared by your partner / parent / cook just the way you like / need it. It makes for a much more interesting conversation.
It is something Indians are used to from a fairly young age. Going to school, you'd take the lunch that mom made with you. Now that you're working.. providing for the family, you deserve an upgrade! :D
In Mumbai, the person working is likely to leave early (say before 7am). The person cooking (typically mom or spouse) gets to lunch later, around 10:30 and it gets delivered. Most Indian food is not great when eaten cold. This also avoids needing to buy and store vegetables since you can get to the market in the morning and buy what you need for the day.
It does rely on having a "homemaker" who is not working and stays at home to cook; in many other countries that's not really an option for the majority of workers as both spouse and mom (if not very old) would be working.
This was also strange to me. I'm used to people bringing home made food with them to the office, then heating it up at lunch time and eating it. But I cannot imagine being sent a freshly cooked meal in the afternoon. Mind-blowing.
I think its a great question. There is a high cultural value in eating warm/freshly cooked meals. While you can get sandwiches even those have warm components (vada pav, grilled cheese etc). These meals are made in the late morning usually by a female member of the household and sent off.
"3.4 mistakes per million deliveries". There are lessons to be learned from these guys, but I think definition of a mistake and this stat in general is, well, flexible.
3.4 mistakes/million (also known as 3.4 DPMO = defects per million opportunities) is just a a statistic from a normal distribution. It comes from the Six-Sigma literature [1].
It's the number of rejects in a 6σ process, assuming a 1.5σ mean shift (1.5σ is an arbitrary assumption for a shift in a long-term process).
You can get a reasonable estimate through random sampling -- which is the basis for most of inferential statistics -- so it's not that flexible. If an adequately powered study was conducted (with a large enough sample size and sufficiently randomized sample), I don't see why the results can't be trusted [2]. A mistake is not that hard to classify (in logistics there are failure reason codes -- wrong address, wrong order, missed delivery, etc. and typically certain categories dominate -- the others are noise).
That said, 3.4 DPMO is kind of a magic number (sort of like 95% confidence intervals -- why 95%? Because Pearson or someone decided it and it stuck).
[2] Side: Systematic misreporting might be an issue of course, and there's not much that can be done there except design a system of incentives and penalties around it. Customer complaints and lost clients are often visible in such systems.
It would be interesting if someone makes a complaint portal for Dabba Walla and post some statistics on how many real complaints do you actually receive.
Moved to Thane, which is right next to Mumbai around six months ago.
Although not really related, but I get a good meal of my choice at roughly INR 70($1)/meal , and I can order in between snacks for a smaller price if needed. And I can stand their while it's cooked or not, all at the comfort of just going to an apartment that is next to mine. It's cheap, healthy and convenient. At my work place, I can't decide the food I want, and I pay 3 times more.
Yes, a fair amount of middle/lower-middle class women in big cities in India make some side cash with this system. Basically just cooking extra portions of lunch and dinner of whatever they're making that day anyway and feeding the busy single neighbours for a very reasonable amount.
Another point I might add:
Please factor in the rate of unemployment and the limited choices for labor when measuring the happiness of these "unskilled" workers.
I agree that we can learn a lesson of efficiency from these guys, but I don't agree that we can learn a lesson of cooperative society and sharing of dividends.
Lack of exposure means we rationalize the existing situation and convince ourselves that this is good. I'm sure there are some dabbawalas thinking "It is what it is. There are no other jobs available, so I might as well."
The Dabbawalas "secret" is: - built on top of public transit: dramatically lower cost, no need to pay for gas - have a pre set schedule and demand / not on-demand: enable huge supply chain optimization.
These 2 are the key differences between the dabbawalas and uber eats supply chains.
Uber can also does similar optimizations if they offer a lunch subscription service that u pre-book ur lunches.
- uses vanes to do batch pick up / drop off: restaurants (small van)-> local hub (large van)-> destination local hub -> final mile delivery on bike / foot.
This will provide efficient supply chain to keep cost down and reliable if theres enough demand.
However, demand might be low because US customers looking to save money are used to pack their own lunch and microwave at work. This is not an option in Mumbai because of crowed train in rush hour.
You can see it in their smile and hear it in their tone...these people take a rare sense of pride in their work. Dabbawalas appear to be a happy, grateful, and fulfilled workforce that do a sufficient job. Add in the cultural prestige and this model strikes me as very tough to compete with. So why?
What aspect of this current approach is broken or inefficient like to the point of justifying the time, money and effort to compete with as a startup? (I didn't gather that part from the article). Is it marginal food cost?
Is it merely because it's a big market operating the old-school way and therefore easy money is being thrown at trying to capture share or supplant using apps? No wonder these ventures are having a tough go at things...seems to me as a solution seeking a problem.
Nothing has to be broken for a startup or a big corp to attempt to make money themselves.
There's money to be made in offering choices - enough money to justify the expenditure in getting something new up and running, seemingly.
Speaking of solutions seeking a problem, early on in my career I was at a blockchain startup of sorts, though I have no idea what blockchain work they actually did. I got a few offers from other blockchain companies too, and I could never figure out what problem they were solving that a database wouldn't solve even better.
One project, a custom Ethereum based coin was running behind on time - like way, way behind. A DB based system was delivered as a prototype (where I noticed floats were used for transaction amounts!), and since the coin was "cloud native", whatever that means, it stayed that way. Client did ask for source code but the company wasn't able to serve that, for obvious reasons...
Of course, you know that this system is able to exist only because the office workers have odd food preferences, and the delivery people get paid like shit, and there's tons of people willing to do the job for such low wage?
If the alternative to having this service is me just carrying a small tin box along with me to work, what are the odds I'm going to shell out $10 each time if it were implemented in any country that has a Western minimum wage?
Everytime a story about India is posted the HN crowd picks apart the negatives of Indian society like caste or poverty. That's the first comment I see when I get here. Always.
STOP THIS!
If you want to focus on the negativity start a separate thread imagine every story about the valley bringing up it's inherent white privilege or racism as the first comment.
Criticism and counter points are the reason why I come here. Taking offense to criticism is how we regress as a society. It has nothing to do with racism except that its a construct in one's mind based on prior experiences, biases and taking excessive pride in one's identity/culture. One can still do that, but that should not mean the public is barred from criticism.
This article focuses on a delivery network powered by a large pool of cheap, unskilled labor. The role of poverty levels in India is very relevant to this topic. Your comment is also the only one that brings up caste.
> The delivery schedule also has built-in buffers. If a delivery is due at 13:00, the dabbawala will aim for around 12:00 [...] For every 15 to 20 dabbawalas there is also always someone on stand-by in case one of them gets delayed.
> At 12:45 a dabbawala races around the corner on a bike and rushes shouting into an office building. [...] The dabbawala was late by his own standards but the customer was probably never aware of the hiccup, he says.
> A dabbawalas’ commitment to the job is partly because it pays well – roughly 12,000 rupees (£140) a month, a good salary in India for what is essentially unskilled labour. The fame of the dabbawalas also gives the job a certain prestige.
> And as a cooperative all dabbawalas are equal partners with supervisors called mukadams who are elected.
It seems like there's no major secret here. The key to achieving such things is... surprise surprise... treating your workers fairly and paying them well so they actually give a shit about their job, and feel appreciated and proud of what they do. The same would actually translate to many other industries.
The food delivery startups could achieve the same if they paid their delivery drivers fairly (at the moment most don't even make minimum wage - compared to the dabbawalas’ "good salary") instead of pissing away their money into marketing/advertising or into someone's pocket, whether greedy investors or "engineers" to build a blockchain-based, Kubernetes-powered microservices playground.