by EBEN SHAPIRO
Mumbai’s famed dabbawala lunch deliveries PHOTO/Alamy
The work of professor Stefan Thomke plays a role in an acclaimed Indian romantic comedy
A Harvard Business School professor is enjoying a weird connection to a critically acclaimed Bollywood rom-com.
Stefan Thomke is the William Barclay Harding Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is an authority on the management of innovation and wrote his master’s thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on “Multivariate Quality Control of Flexible Manufacturing Processes.”
“The Lunchbox” is the debut feature of Ritesh Batra. The film, which was released in a limited number of theaters in late February and is now expanding across the country, is getting strong reviews. The Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern called it a “sumptuous treat.”
The wistful romantic comedy focuses on a lonely pair that, after a botched lunch delivery, communicates via notes exchanged in lunchboxes delivered by Mumbai’s famed dabbawalas. Using an intricate network of bikes and commuter trains, the dabbawalas deliver thousands of home-cooked lunches a day to office workers. Their intricate logistics have long attracted the attention of efficiency experts, including Prof. Thomke.
The 49-year-old professor, who is married to a woman from India, has been visiting the country for personal and professional reasons for more than 20 years. Long intrigued by the dabbawalas, he began doing formal research on the group in 2008. As part of his field work in Mumbai, he spent time with the dabbawalas, even helping out on the deliveries one day. “It’s hard work,” he said.
He compiled his research into one of Harvard Business School’s case studies, “The Dabbawala System: On-Time Delivery, Every Time,” where it is proving to be extremely popular with students and business executives enrolled in executive-education classes there.
Prof. Thomke’s work is referenced in the film’s promotional materials and in the movie. “Harvard University analyzed their delivery system and concluded just one in a million lunchboxes is ever delivered to the wrong address,” according to the website of Sony Pictures Classics, the film’s U.S. distributor. “That’s not quite accurate,” said Prof. Thomke, adding: “Whether it’s one in a million or one in five million, we didn’t really put a number on it.”
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