Septuagenarian Raghunath Medge is a worried man. The third generation dabbawala is not sure what to make of the frenetic change that is afoot in what used to be a very humdrum, traditional business of delivering food to Mumbai's office-goers.

" Itna padhai agar karna hai to bachche dabbawala kyun banenge? Woh to saare doctor, engineer ban jayenge (If the younger generation is going to have to study so much, why will they come into this profession? They will become doctors or engineers; they won't want to be dabbawalas)," he frets.

But there is no turning back the wheel. Today's dabbawalas have indeed discovered the benefits of education and they want to use the learning in a bid to reinvent their business.

Behind the efforts to teach younger members new ways to tackle the world - and the trade - is the Mumbai Dabbawala Education Centre (MDEC), set up by Dr Pawan Agrawal, an educational activist who discovered that while most dabbawalas had studied till Class VIII, there was no dearth of students at the centre.

He started the education centre in 1998 when he heard that dabbawalas' children seldom got the opportunity to study. The school, funded by his Kamlabai Educational and Charitable Trust, has grown significantly since then.

Today it has 5,000 children - of dabbawalas and of others. In 2010, the school started a spoken English and computer courses for dabbawalas.

Prashant Sanas has picked up English from the centre. He never thought he needed to know English - after all, he had followed his father and grandfather into this line of work, and neither had the benefit of education, let alone the knowledge of English.

But when the MDEC offered him a chance, Sanas grabbed it. "I have been going to the centre for the last six months and I can now manage a few words in English," says the 40-year-old with pride.

Agrawal's interest in the trade (sparked by an uncle who was a customer) led to a PhD in the subject. He stresses that English is a key medium of communication, and dabbawalas need to know the basics.

"They do not need to speak the language fluently but they should know how to greet people, exchange pleasantries such as 'thank you' and 'welcome' or deliver messages if there is a need to," he says.

To facilitate the dabbawalas' work, MDEC also offers computer lessons. Technology can help streamline the work of the 5,000-odd dabbawalas who roam the streets of Mumbai, picking up food from the houses of their clients and carting them to their workplaces.

The world of dabbawalas, clearly, is in for a change. In another interesting development, women too have started joining the fleet. Today, there are 19 women who are working as dabbawalas. Sushila Kanse, wife of a dabbawala, is one of them.

"We do only the local collections; get the boxes from the customer's home to the central sorting place and return it to them. It is not possible for us to carry 65kg and deliver to customers who are miles away from the sorting place," says Kanse. Moreover, there are no special vendors' compartments for women in the local trains as there are for men, she says. "So we cannot board the trains easily."

Women joined the force after the death of a dabbawala in 2009. "He was the sole bread-earner in his family. With him gone, his family had no one and nothing to fall back on. That is when his wife wanted to work in his place. With time, this idea went viral," says Subhash Talekar, who comes from a dabbawala family.

Talekar's grandfather, Lakshman Talekar, was a dabbawala who started working in 1915. Later, his father also joined the fleet. "I graduated in 1995 and joined the 100-year-old family business. My father had opened a mini bank - Dakkhan Mawde Cooperative Credit Society - to take care of the loan requirements of dabbawalas. I am now looking after it, and there are 35 people working with me," Talekar, 35, says.

He has also opened a mess for customers who do not have the luxury to cook at home. "Nowadays, when both the husband and the wife go out to work, there is no one at home to cook," he says. Within a month of opening the mess, Talekar had 15 customers.

Functioning since 1890, Mumbai's dabbawalas are a legendary workforce, known to have created their own code language by which they could identify locations and customers. "The less educated depend on these symbols I made decades ago," says Medge who is the ex-president of the Mumbai Dabbawala Association.

Medge, who is wary of the recent changes to the job and profile of a dabbawala, is himself regarded as a brand ambassador of the food carriers.

"I have gone to IIMs (Indian Institute of Management) and the ISB (Indian School of Business) to lecture on the accuracy, time management and consistency of dabbawalas," he says.

The modern dabbawala understands marketing and advertising intuitively. "There was a time when dabbawalas used to travel in trains or ride their bicycles while delivering food. That was their symbol. Now many of them use motorcycles. Dabbawalas are a symbol of timeliness," says Bhushan Phapale, who studied in Agrawal's school and later did his BCom and MBA from another institute that Agrawal runs.

Thirty-two-year-old Phapale, whose grandfather and father had been dabbawalas, is the mukadam or head of a team of dabbawalas. "I have eight people working under me. I earn nearly Rs 40,000 per month. The salaries of the dabbawalas who work under me vary according to the distance they cover. For each and every dabba, a dabbawala gets anything between Rs 450 and Rs 500 per month."

Phapale has plans to introduce an online money transfer facility for customers. "Customers depend more on plastic money than physical money, so this is definitely going to be a welcome move. Also, our customers are using the online medium for orders. This is going to make payment easier," he says.

Many of the dabbawalas are also expanding their business. Jaysingh, Bhushan's father, delivers juice to his clients. Some of them also work as delivery boys with the online ecommerce site Flipkart. "They have tied up with Flipkart and work as courier delivery people. They have also approached [fast food giant] KFC offering to provide delivery services," Agrawal states.

This is not all. Dabbawalas have also started a project called Roti Bank, under which they collect extra food from weddings and birthday parties and distribute it among underprivileged children.

For dabbawalas, business is going places. And for Agrawal, perhaps the time has come for another study - this one on the changing face of Mumbai's most intrepid workers?