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From: boingboing <rssfeeds@example.com>
Subject: Dabba Wallahs: India's meal-delivery FedEx
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 15:11:43 -0000
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URL: http://boingboing.net/#85494359
Date: Not supplied

Amazing story about the "dabba wallahs" -- India's 112-year-old meal-delivery 
system that outdoes FedEx using pictograms, bicycles, and largely illiterate 
(but well-compensated) deliverypeople: 

    As part of the tiffin distribution process, every day the meals are picked 
    up from commuters' homes in Mumbai long after the commuters have left for 
    work, delivered to them on time, then picked up and delivered home before 
    the commuters return. 

    Each tiffin carrier has, painted on its top, a number of symbols that 
    identify where the carrier was picked up, the originating and destination 
    stations and the address to which it is to be delivered. 

    After the tiffin carriers are picked up, they are taken to the nearest 
    railway station, where they are sorted according to the destination 
    station. 

    At the destination station they are unloaded by other dabba wallahs and 
    re-sorted, this time according to street address and floor. 

    The 80 kg crates of carriers, carried on dabba wallahs' heads, hand-wagons 
    and cycles are delivered at 12.30 p.m., picked up at 1.30 p.m., and 
    returned when they came. 

    The system relies on multiple relays of dabba wallahs, and a single tiffin 
    box may change hands up to three times during its journey from home to 
    office.  

Link[1] Discuss[2] (_Thanks, Tom!_)

[1] http://in.news.yahoo.com/020920/43/1vfdw.html
[2] http://www.quicktopic.com/boing/H/H96NaZc8PTyq