That would seem to make it pretty fundamentally incompatible with the wage extraction operations that are uber, deliveroo etc.
Yes, and I think aspect of capitalism is under-discussed. The conventional narrative is that it doesn't matter how much wealth somebody else (or some other company) has. You can compete on your own merit.
But companies like Uber and other VC-backed "unicorns" show otherwise. They can afford to give away their product for free on the back of money that they didn't earn in any meaningful way. And it completely breaks the model.
(Which doesn't mean there aren't things to learn, of course, for those trying to run more conventional businesses.)
Easier said than done.
Not that I disagree, but business models like these are difficult in more developed countries. It's the same reason you will find middle class people in many less developed countries with domestic staff. The wealth divide between the middle class and poor is so extreme in places like India, that you can afford to charge your regular customers enough money to pay poor employees a "good" wage. "Good" in this case is of course very relative. Relative to many other poor people that have no job at all.
The flip side of this trend is the ubiquity of vending machines in Japan, which have the advantage of requiring no sales staff. This is very useful in a country where the labor force is shrinking and demand for low-skilled workers outstrips supply.
A quick data check suggests that a software engineer in Mumbai can easily make literally ten times this "good salary". Would you consider paying food delivery workers in London 10% of an software engineer's pay packet a "good salary"? Fair treatment?
Some crude calculations on my part suggest that it would be well below minimum wage in the UK. Is it possible that there might be more going on than "good salary"? Other commenters point out that there's a deep gulf in expected living conditions that enables such a low level of pay to be a "good salary".
Taken together, these suggest to me that this is a model that exploits extreme poverty and inequality. One that perhaps we should be glad cannot be replicated in many other places.
They could, but they do everything to give the perception that food delivery is cheap. UberEats takes a 30% cut of the restaurant price. Most of them don't increase their prices in response. They really should consider it (and fortunately, some do), it devalues their offering (and restaurants already work with razor thin margins).
Same thing for their drivers salaries. Better to drive it into the ground than paying them a living wage and see a slower adoption as a result.
Not sure the quotes around engineers are needed. I have zero sympathy for most of these companies but it is still an engineering challenge to do food delivery at scale.
> good wage
That's unlivable wage.
Also, those companies you have listed pay more.
https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cYbdfsYk93HFhMuC0XgaNN/Sw...
Secondly the dabbawala jobs are more like a stable union job. You don't get the top money but everyone looks after each other. Of course with time customer preferences may change towards restaurant food. Or maybe workers start using plastic containers and microwaves.
It could be because they see their purpose as delivering food to people on time and it doesn't seem like the nascent services have figured out how to do that well at scale - thus they may make more over there but are less fulfilled in their life mission?
Will need citation for that but regardless, my point is that it is still not a livable wage regardless of whether it is average or above average.
Secondly, the parent compared food delivery startups and companies - both of which pay more than 12k monthly assuming you work 8 hours per day.
In main areas of Mumbai that amount may not even fetch a small sized windowless room (no kitchen, or living space - just a room and a common washroom outside) and I am not even talking about "posh" Mumbai.
I will give it a few more years. People who work those jobs are also majorly illiterate and may not be willing to change as implied in the article.
https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cYbdfsYk93HFhMuC0XgaNN/Sw...
The Dabbawalas is more efficient because: - built on top of public transit: dramatically lower cost, no need to pay for gas - have a pre set schedule and demand / not on-demand: enable huge supply chain optimization.
1. If these guys pay taxes or charge GST on food delivered.
2. How many units they deliver each day
3. What the cost of delivery of each unit and what's the value of the food content?
2. Article claims roughly 200,000 deliveries per day.
3a. Cost of each delivery is Rs. 800 per month / 24 working days = approx Rs. 33 (or less than half a dollar) per delivery. Normally the delivery involves a pick up as well (previous day's container is picked up along with today's delivery).
3b. Value of food content is irrelevant – it can be super expensive or dirt cheap, dabbawalas only care that it is packed in certain types of containers.
> The delivery schedule also has built-in buffers. If a delivery is due at 13:00, the dabbawala will aim for around 12:00 [...] For every 15 to 20 dabbawalas there is also always someone on stand-by in case one of them gets delayed.
> At 12:45 a dabbawala races around the corner on a bike and rushes shouting into an office building. [...] The dabbawala was late by his own standards but the customer was probably never aware of the hiccup, he says.
> A dabbawalas’ commitment to the job is partly because it pays well – roughly 12,000 rupees (£140) a month, a good salary in India for what is essentially unskilled labour. The fame of the dabbawalas also gives the job a certain prestige.
> And as a cooperative all dabbawalas are equal partners with supervisors called mukadams who are elected.
It seems like there's no major secret here. The key to achieving such things is... surprise surprise... treating your workers fairly and paying them well so they actually give a shit about their job, and feel appreciated and proud of what they do. The same would actually translate to many other industries.
The food delivery startups could achieve the same if they paid their delivery drivers fairly (at the moment most don't even make minimum wage - compared to the dabbawalas’ "good salary") instead of pissing away their money into marketing/advertising or into someone's pocket, whether greedy investors or "engineers" to build a blockchain-based, Kubernetes-powered microservices playground.