Mumbai's dabbawalas challenge Subodh Sangle who said the group plans to set up a delivery company

BENGALURU: After a lecture at IIM-Ahmedabad less than 10 days ago, Subodh Sangle, coordinator of Mumbai Dabbawala Association, said the group planned to set up a delivery company leveraging its fabled logistics network. The dabbawalas think differently.

Members of the largely Marathi-speaking grouping have challenged Sangle’s authority and issued a notice for him to step down, insisting they were not informed of the plans for a delivery company. Sangle, an information technology graduate from Mumbai University, says these members do not hold official positions and has stayed put.


The conflict threatens to put the 125-year-old Mumbai tradition in a bit of a pickle.

The dabbawalas are grassroots men who became legendary for their near clockwork precision in delivering lunch carriers to office-goers across Mumbai. But they are increasingly under pressure to reinvent to take on new-age companies such as food-ordering startups that have mushroomed in the past year. Flipkart, last year, signed on the dabbawalas for last-mile delivery.

The Mumbai Dabbawala Association, which has about 5,000 members, hired the educated, English-speaking Sangle about five years ago to promote it and help it grow. Now, the dabbawalas fear he isn’t acting in their interests.

"For the past one year he has never been present at any meetings. He doesn’t tell us about his interactions with other companies or external people," said Nitin Sawant, general secretary of Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Supplier Association, the name under which Mumbai Dabbawala Association operates. Sawant said the association issued notice to Sangle three months ago to resign. But "after asking him to serve notice, we received a cheque book a month ago at our Dadar office, indicating that he had set up an account in the name of the charitable trust associated with the organisation—but we never received the amount," said Sawant, speaking in Hindi.

Bhausaheb Karvandey of Mumbai Dabbawala Association, said that Sangle had taken advantage of the fact that the dabbawalas can barely speak in English and were not educated.

"Despite sending him a notice and asking him to leave, he refuses to do so," Karvandey said.

Sangle denied the accusations and insisted the association was in talks with companies and investors to establish a delivery firm, likely in a few months. He said the notice asking him to step down had been issued by a self-appointed committee comprising about 30 members— including Karvandey who he said was a "self-proclaimed president"— in an attempt to freeze the association’s bank accounts.

"They were successful in doing that since bank authorities don’t want any confusion where money is concerned. However, we proved that those were not the official documents," Sangle said from Mumbai by phone.