<P> At each station, boxes are handed over to a local dabbawala, who delivers them . The empty boxes are collected after lunch or the next day and sent back to the respective houses . The dabbawalas also allow for delivery requests through SMS . </P> <P> Most tiffin - wallahs are related to each other, belong to the Varkari sect of Maharashtra, and come from the same small village near Pune . Tiffin distribution is suspended for five days each March as the tiffin - wallahs go home for the annual village festival . </P> <P> Each dabbawala, regardless of role, is paid around 8,000 rupees per month (about US $131 in 2014). Between 175,000 and 200,000 lunch boxes are moved each day by 4,500 to 5,000 dabbawalas . Tiffin - wallahs are self - employed . The union initiation fee is 30,000 rupees, which guarantees a 5,000 rupee monthly income and a job for life . The 150 rupee a month fee provides for delivery six days a week. (2002) </P> <P> It is frequently claimed that dabbawalas make less than one mistake in every six million deliveries, however this is only an estimation from Ragunath Medge, the president of the Mumbai Tiffinmen's Association in 1998, and is not from a rigorous study . Medge told Subrata Chakravarty, the lead author of the' Fast Food' article by Forbes where this claim first appeared, that dabbawalas make a mistake "almost never, maybe once every two months" and this statement was extrapolated by Subrata Chakravarty to be a rate of "one mistake in 8 million deliveries ." Chakravarty recalled the affair in an interview and said: </P>

Nutan tiffin box service was started in mumbai