MBA students learn corporate lessions from Dabbawalla techniques

Bangalore, Aug 22 (UNI) With their pajamas and Gandhi caps, Dabbawallas may not look suave or wear a corporate hat, but the Mumbai's lunch carriers today taught some useful lessons to the MBA students in a city college on how to excel in the corporate world with time sense and hard work.

"You have to see well to do well in your career. If you can't stick to the deadlines, you are as good as dead. If I can't deliver the lunch box in time, I will have to take it back to my client's home and you can imagine how useful it can be if I do that," Mr Raghunath D Medge, President of Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Charity (NMTBC) Trust, the body of 5000-strong Mumbai-dabbawallas explained to the students of the International School here today.

Speaking at an orientation programme, he said there was no substitute for hard work and to ensure personal growth in any field, one has to give his or her customer's 'health' the top priority.

"A good leader can never make things run properly if there are flaws in the system. One should never compromise with the discipline in the organisation, as it his the integrity of that association.

The prime principle is that customer satisfaction should be the important goal of any company," he said.

Mr Medge said punctuality and time management was given top priority by the dabbawallas. "Whether it rains or shine, or even if there is a calamity we never get delayed even for a few minutes. For years we have been taking the same trains and buses. We have to cover a distance of 65 to 75 kms a day in three hours. We cannot afford any delay," NMTBC Secretary Gangaram Talekar, who also spoke to the students explained.

He said the tiffin distribution required negligible technology and that was one reason why dabbawallas had been so successful. "We may not employ high technology but our manpower is highly efficient.

Intelligent people waste their time in asking too many questions whereas we only focus on fulfilling our responsibility," he said.

"We don't know the exact meaning of error, but one thing that I know is when you are serving someone, it is not acceptable to make mistakes," Mr Talekar added.

The dabbawallas take two lakh tiffin boxes every day resulting in total transaction of four lakh per day. But amazingly the error rate is one in 16 million transactions. That was how they have earned Six Sigma certification.

UNI