STRATEGY TIPS: Richard Branson of the Virgin group with a section of Mumbai’s dabbawallahs

India’s supply chain management sensations — the Mumbai dabbawallahs — will share their success strategy with boardroom honchos and budding managers in Calcutta.

Icfai Business School (IBS), Calcutta, in association with The Telegraph, has invited two Mumbai dabbawallahs to recount their experiences and explain their strategies on October 27 at the Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre, in Salt Lake.

“We use many foreign case studies, as well as case studies from the organised sector for our supply chain management course, which is integral to any management course. The Mumbai dabbawallahs are a classic example rooted in our country, which makes them an ideal case study,” said Santanu Ray, director, IBS, Calcutta.

The interactive session with the dabbawallahs has been opened to students of all institutes and has already seen huge response from Jadavpur University and IIT Kharagpur, as well as corporate houses like Descon and Nestle.

More than 1,000 people are expected to attend the session on Saturday evening.

“We feel that students, academicians as well as corporate officers have a lot to learn from the home-grown management experts. No wonder we have received such huge response,” said Ray.

The Mumbai dabbawallah has been a source of interest for management academicians for the efficiency of their marketing, customer service, logistics and supply chain.

Their system has hardly ever had a breakdown, even though it functions almost without the aid of modern technology other than SMS.

“Supply chain management has become very important today. It is about cost optimisation in the shortest time. What better example than the dabbawallahs? They manage to perform without any of software used by companies today,” said Ray.

The success of the dabbawallahs has been studied at Harvard Business School. The Berkeley University in California also teaches the logistics of dabbawallahs in its business management programmes.