NITIE Students Took to Streets with Mumbai Dabbawalas to Explore their Biz Management

NITIE Students Took to Streets with Mumbai Dabbawalas to Explore their Biz Management

"Institute - Industry - Market" is an often quoted mantra of learning, here at NITIE.

With "Mandi", NITIE made a statement about its pedagogy - the first business school in India to adopt the experiential method of teaching. It integrates the theoretical principles of managerial economics, marketing and basic market research with practical application, for a socially responsible cause.

In the Mahatma's words, "To achieve 'Learning Effectiveness', the pedagogy must touch all the four aspects of a learner, i.e., Head, Hand, Heart and Soul."

Thus, after direct sales with "Mandi", the Management Batch of 2008 once again took to the streets with the Dabbawalas to explore the whole gamut of business experiences, viz., Team Work, Time Management, Innovation, CRM, Logistics & Supply Chain Management and Human Resource Management.

The idea was to provide a unique platform for recognizing excellence in the field of Logistics and getting hands on learning of the Design, Strategy and Networking fundamentals from the best in business - The Dabbawalas.

The field workshop entailed careful observation and engagement in the following activities by the students: -

Sorting out the dabbas based on the coding system

Carrying the dabbas to the point of delivery

Actual delivery of the dabbas, collecting the returned dabbas from the consumers

Back sorting of the returned dabbas

This symbiotic programme provided the Mumbai Dabbawalas professional consulting by NITIE students and proved a practical case study of successful logistical networking, thus, streamlining the students' theoretical knowledge.

As Killi Chandrashekhar, a management student, put it, "A lot of things are easier said than done. So we decided to do it. A lot has been said and spoken about the Dabbawalas; we decided to go through their daily routine."

Using a zoning system approach with several teams supervised by their very own "Mukadam", the men-at-arms use the city's best resource, the local trains ,in the delivery process.

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Contributed by -
Sriram Vasudevan,
Student Media Cell - IMpress,
NITIE Business School, Mumbai.

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