Mumbai Dabbawalas

Can you guess the company that has never gone on strike since last 116 years, this is a company where the whole work force is illiterate but they lecture MBA students of Stanford, IIM A and likes. It is ISO 2000 certified company with six-sigma in process. Prince Charles invites them for his marriage; Richard Branson visits them when he comes to India. I am sure by now you must have guessed it rightly; I am talking about Mumbai Dabbawalas (MDs).

Mumbai Dabbawalas is India’s one of the Top Brands. It is one of the trusted brands in India. Even the companies like Microsoft and Airtel associated with Mumbai Dabbawalas. Microsoft partnered with them to promote their new Windows package to the target segment. Even Airtel collaborated with them to distribute new schemes, prepaid connections.

The Dabbawalas brand is a synonymous with trust and commitment that is why now the companies like Reliance Power has collaborated with them to distribute the forms for their IPO. The important thing is that MDs never launched any marketing or per say branding programme.  It is just their service that brought them the brand value.

Recently MDs have launched a website to showcase their work and their achievements. It is surprising to find that they have included tabs like jobs@MDs, their lectures with various MBA colleges. They have started taking orders online now and a text messaging order taking system that enables them to bag orders real time instead of depending on secondary sources like references or word-of-mouth. It’s a major driver as establishing a Web-based and mobile phone ordering system was the need for a central ordering facility where one can call for a Dabbawala's service by just hitting the Web site or through an SMS. Since they introduced the SMS-based ordering service they have been getting about 5500 new orders every year.

Now they have adopted another marketing strategy of merchandising the things that are directly associated with them like Gandhi Cap, Iconic Dabba etc. They have very well sustained the labour intensive model of business but without incorporating technology in such an era would be challenging for them