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Dabbawalas have for decades collected hot
lunches from customers' often distant homes and, using a complex
delivery system and overladen bicycles, carried them to offices
and schools across the city.
"Their unique delivery system has been smooth, reliable and has
survived the test of time - even under extreme conditions,"
Neeraj Aggarwal, senior director for last mile delivery at
Flipkart said in a statement on Thursday evening.
Under the deal - part of a plan by the e-commerce firm to
explore new delivery channels - dabbawallas will make deliveries
assigned from a Flipkart hub while collecting hot meals from
customers' homes.
Privately held Flipkart leads India's e-commerce industry,
selling everything from cellphones to suitcases and competing
with Amazon's India unit and other home grown rival Snapdeal for
a chunk of the fast growing industry.
Online retailing is growing at a breakneck pace in India, which
has the world's third-largest population of Internet users even
with only a fifth of its population online.
Mumbai's dabbawalas - often semi-literate deliverymen from rural
Maharashtra, the state where Mumbai is located - deliver about
200,000 "tiffin," or lunch, boxes every day, according to their
website.
Their coding system has been recognized with the Six Sigma level
of accuracy, meaning they make only one mistake in 6 million
chances, attracting them admirers from Britain's Prince Charles
to entrepreneur Richard Branson.
Flipkart said the dabbawalas had undergone training at the
company's delivery centers and would start with a paper-based
tracking system, moving on to apps and wearable technology.
(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Mumbai; Editing by
Jeremy Laurence)
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