Digital Dabbawalas: From delivering dabbas to offering
click-based services
It’s been more than a decade that the world woke up to the
reality that Mumbai’s lunch-dabba system is an act of urban genius.
Some called it as the most ingenious food delivery system in the
world. The Forbes magazine gave the dabbawalas (lunchbox deliverymen) a
Six Sigma performance rating or a 99.99999 percent of precision, which means
they make one error in 16 million deliveries! In the last 125 years, there has
not been a single instance of a lunchbox that has not been delivered to its
destination. Come rain or shine, heavy crowded local trains or Mumbai traffic,
the lunch box is picked up from home and delivered. This is the precision of
their service – and all this without using any technology.
In recent times, with the world and India taking digital leaps,
the dabbawala’s too have found the need to embrace technology and offer
click-based services.
“Most of our staff is semi-literate. We earn around Rs. 10,000
to 12,000 per month and were looking for opportunities to have an additional
source of income. Our Prime Minister is working towards Digital India mission,
and when we got an opportunity from Anulom Technologies for rental
registrations, we too decided to offer digital services,” says Ulhas Muke,
President, Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association.
Dabba delivery to digital services
Around 5,000 dabbawalas travel over 60 to 70 km daily to deliver
over 2 lakh lunchboxes across Mumbai, and have earned a reputation for their
meticulous operations, integrity and honesty.
In October this year, with the launch of digitaldabbawala.com,
they are now expanding their delivery from just lunch boxes to last-mile
delivery of digital services. This is a combined initiative with Anulom
Technologies, a government approved rental-agreement registration website.
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“Today, everyone wants to work with a trusted facilitator for
digital services. The first of such services by us has been around online
rental agreement registration. Anulom directs our dabbawala to a customer’s
doorstep with a laptop and a biometric device where the rental agreement format
is shown, thumb impressions are taken with the help of biometric machine and
documents collected if needed,” says Jaising Pingle, Treasurer, Mumbai Tiffin
Box Suppliers Association, and who is the first trained digital dabbawala.
Before launching this service, Anulom handpicked a 15 member
team for process and laptop training. Each of these 15 individuals were chosen
from different regions in Mumbai and Thane.
We were amazed to witness that within two days this group had
completely explored most of the laptop features and knew basics like turning it
on, logging in and connecting to the net. Post this we held a two day boot camp
in the evening for four hours to train them properly, both on the usage of
laptops and biometric device working and also around the process of rental registration.
We installed an app on their mobile devices. So there is no need to type a
single letter. All they need to do is point and click and it is easily
understandable. They are exceptionally fast learners,” says Prabodh Navare,
CEO, Anulom Technologies.
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These people
initially trained by Anulom have now become the building blocks of the digital
movement and are training their fellow dabbawalas. Going ahead,
digitaldabbawala.com is planning to launch services like making of Aadhaar
cards, changing names on documents, marriage registrations or making other
government documents.
-By Ashwani Mishra, ETCIO.com
http://cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com/dobig/news/detail/1024?intenttarget=no&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ETwealth&type=wealth&content=&ncode=fda6ee848ef8ab9ce78ba351f5bd24c5
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