DabbaGul- Bringing ‘Dabbawalas’ to Gurgaon

When someone speaks about a ‘Dabbawala’, invariably, that persons refers to the indefatigable workers wearing white ‘marathi topis’ and delivering lunch boxes(dabba) in Mumbai. It all started about 125 years back when a Parasi banker wanted to have home cooked food regularly in office and gave this responsibility to the first ever Dabbawala. Thereafter, the association of Dabbawalas was started by Mahadeo Havaji Bacche in 1890 to provide jobs to unemployed youths from the neighbouring villages of Mumbai.

The recent surge in employment in the services sector in different cities has necessitated the presence of similar services as everyone prefers home cooked food and that too at reasonable rate.

DabbaGul is an online aggregator of Dabba services and acts as a facilitator between the HomeChef and the customer. DabbaGul lists the meals cooked by the HomeChefs on its app, manages orders and ensures delivery in the time-slot as selected by the customer. DabbaGul along with the chefs are responsible for the quality of their dishes and maintaining hygiene.  Currently the Startup is operating in and around Gurgaon.

“8 months back, we were sitting in the office cafeteria ruing the monotony of daily lunch. We did order occasionally from the new food-tech start-ups but there was always a bargain – the food were either too expensive or did not offer good quality assurance. That is when we decided to offer customers hygienic delicious lunch/dinner options at reasonable price point.” said Rahul Garg, co-founder DabbaGul.

“We had started with a pilot in and around cybercity in the month of February for friends and acquaintances. Thereafter we launched full scale operations – delivering in  DLF Phase 1,2,3 MG Road, and Cyber City.We have recently expanded to other areas in Gurgaon such as Udyog Vihar, Golf Course Road, Sushant Lok, South City. Dinner will be launched in a couple of weeks followed by expansion into all areas of Gurgaon. Our biggest focus is on quality ,hence we limit the number of dabbas any chef cooks to 10″ he added.

The number of food delivery Startups are increasing rapidly including the home-cooked food delivery segment. The competition is bound to grow as the iconic Dabbawalas of Mumbai will soon launch their own company so as to become a formal set up and an even bigger brand. Apart from delivering food, they will also supply organic milk, vegetables and other goods.Speculations are that they will expand their operations to other cities and with ISO 9001- 2000 certifications for Excellence in service, they will pose tough competition to companies operating in similar segment.

Team TOS