Dabbawalas of Mumbai

The Mumbai Dabbawalas are a legendary and essential part of life in Mumbai. One of the closeest meanings of Dabawalla in English would be ‘lunch box delivery man’. They carry and deliver freshly made food from customer’s home in a lunch box (Dabba) and deliver it to offices. The Dabbawala service has started about 125 years ago when a Parsi banker wanted to have home cooked food regularly in office and gave this responsibility to the first ever Dabbawala. Other people liked the idea and the demand for Dabba delivery soared. Currently, Mumbai Dabbawalas are about 5000 in number and deliver approximately 200,000 tiffin boxes every day. Their system is nearly flawless, and has been awarded a 6 sigma level of accuracy, meaning the Dabbawalas incredibly have only a one in  six million chance of making a mistake on a delivery.