The tradition began when a Parsi banker wanted to have home cooked food regularly delivered to his office and gave the responsibility to the first ever dabbawala. It soon caught on among others and the demand for the meals-on-wheels service soared. 

Steel, the Preferred Metal for Your Meal

While the wala, or carrier, is no doubt the driving force behind the system, the dabba, or lunchbox, is a central component of India’s meal delivery culture. Widely used throughout the subcontinent, these multi-tiered “tiffin” (Indian English for a light midday meal) carriers are generally made from stainless steel and can keep food warm for up to three hours.

In addition to the tiffin boxes’ warming properties, the fact that they are made of steel means they offer plenty of other benefits, too. For one, they don’t leach toxins like plastic, ensuring food is safer, and they’re also more hygienic and easier to clean than those made of other materials—a big plus when it comes to rinsing off curry, vegetable and dal residue. Furthermore, the containers are durable and sustainable, meaning they don’t damage easily and can virtually last a lifetime.

Similar types of lunchboxes are also commonly used in other parts of the world, such as Southwest Asia and Northeast Africa, as well as parts of South America and Europe. Like India, the boxes in these containers hold much more than just food. They often contain mementos—a flower, a movie ticket, an apology note—and more importantly, love from the cooks, who are usually hardworking housewives. But the journey these steel boxes must undergo is a lengthy one—one that takes a dabbawala an entire day to complete. 

A Day in the Life of the Dabbawala

By 9 o’clock every morning, the dabbawala has hit the streets, pedaling his bicycle—one designed with extra iron to withstand a heavier load—through the congested Mumbai traffic to his assigned area. As many older buildings are not equipped with elevators, the dabba climbs up and down the towering residences to collect the tiffin boxes from homes.

By the time he completes the collection, it’s already about 10:30am. He now carries the 30-40 lunchboxes he has accumulated on his bike, undeterred by the poor road conditions, mud, traffic and merciless Mumbai monsoons that plague the region every summer.

He then reaches the nearest railway station where fellow dabbawalas gather and sort the tiffins by destination utilizing a simple but seemingly flawless coding system. By now, most of his tiffins are handed over to other teams dispersing to various parts of the city. He joins one of them, and with his teammates, transfers different tiffin boxes in crates and hastily transports them to the railway platforms on his head.

If a tiffin is on a complex route, it is further sorted on the railway platform where even more dabbawala teams work together to move the wooden crates into the trains. With the boxes put away in the luggage compartments, the men can take a short break before arriving at their assigned stations around noon.

Racing against the clock, the wala rushes out of the station with the lunchboxes atop his head and once again disperses them among other teams. Joining yet a different group, he and the men place the boxes in trollies and dash toward the business centers, the final destinations for the tiffin boxes.

As they do, pedestrians make way for the shouting, pushing dabbawalas, knowing well that they don’t stop for anyone. Each man then takes the responsibility of delivering the lunches to separate buildings, moving up and down the elevators. By 1pm, all are delivered, but the dabbawala’s job is not over yet. After a brief lunch, the dabbawala takes the empty tiffin boxes from the offices and repeats the process until all of the dabbas are returned to their respected homes before 6pm.

The century-old Indian meal delivery system that is powered by teamwork and steel remains incredibly efficient, even in an age where just about everything else is operated using the latest technology. Time will only tell how the process may evolve in the future (registration has recently gone virtual), but it is certain it will continue to serve as a model of service excellence for the entire world.

Be sure you never miss any of the exciting steel stories from The Steel Wire by subscribing to our blog.

POSCO’s Integrated India Steelworks Project received the green-light.

On January 16^th, President Geun-hye Park, who is visiting India as a national guest, held a summit conference with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and received approval for Korean enterprise to support the Indian government in constructing a steelworks in the State of Orissa.

Accordingly, POSCO expects to speed up the administrative approval processes, including mining rights approval, and construction site securement which has been in progress since a local subsidiary was established in August 2005.

POSCO signed an MOU with the State Government of Orissa in June 2005 regarding steelworks sites, mining rights, and the provision of exclusive ports, and implemented a 12 million ton steelworks construction project with a 12 billion USD investment.

However, lawsuits concerning iron ore exploration rights arose as well as delays in securing sites owned by the state, creating difficulty in fully implementing the project.

With President Park’s assistance, POSCO was able to re-acquire environmental authorization and approval for steelworks construction, the first of which expired in 2012, 5 years after approval in 2007.

Accordingly, POSCO secured the legal ownership of 11,239,669㎡ of land on which it plans to construct a 8 million ton steelworks, and can continue the process to receive approval from the India Central Government for iron ore exploration rights in areas approximately 300㎞ inland from the steelworks, raising expectations for smooth steelworks project implementation.

POSCO plans to focus on securing mining rights timed in relation to steelworks completion, considering the time needed to complete mine development after receiving iron ore exploration rights approval, and will continue to prepare the basis for steelworks construction including site securement and infrastructure connection.

The steelworks to be built in the state of Orissa is competitive, with plans to apply environmentally-friendly FINEX technology for which POSCO holds patents, and will have a direct employment effect of approximately 18,000 hires, with another 870,000 jobs likely to be created in related industries. Once the Orissa steelworks is completed, quality steel materials can be provided, ultimately contributing to steel demand industry development and the regional economy and that of India overall.

In tandem with steelworks construction in India’s Eastern Orissa, POSCO constructed a Zinc Plating Plant for high end automobile steel plates, with completion in May 2012, and an annual production of 450,000 tons.; a Non-oriented Steel Plate Plant completed in December 2013, at an annual production of 300,000 tons; and a Cold-rolled Plant with an expected completion date of June 2014, and annual production of 1.8 million tons in the state of Maharashtra, investing a total of 1.2 billion USD to carry out down stream production and construction projects simultaneously.

Steel processing centers have also been established in Delhi, Pune, and Chennai to provide quality services for automobile and home appliance demand, while a logistics subsidiary is in operation at Diggi Harbor near Mumbai.

In addition to the steel project, POSCO Family companies including POSCO E&C, Daewoo International, POSCO PLANTEC, and POSCO ICT are making efforts to strengthen cooperation in various industries essential to the growth of India’s economy, with a total of 14 local subsidiaries, approximately 100 dispatched employees, and 1,540 local hires, contributing to regional growth and job creation.