A dabba crosses Mumbai. A loan file in a bank gets lost between teams. One arrives flawlessly, the other erodes trust. That’s the real test of Ahead of What’s Ahead in Banking and not whether a bank has mobile apps, online onboarding, loan origination systems, CRM tools, analytics dashboards, credit engines, call-centre platforms, workflow layers, and AI pilots. Most Indian Banks already do. The problem is not that banks are behind. The uncomfortable truth is different parts of the bank have moved ahead, but the customer journey has not always moved as one. The gap between the customer’s expectation of “one bank” and the institution’s fragmented reality is where trust breaks and where banks risk falling behind. That is where the Mumbai dabbawala story becomes powerful, not because it shows strength in a manual system, but because it reminds us what true connected execution looks like.
Mumbai’s Dabbawala Network : A Masterclass in Orchestrated Operational Coordination
Mumbai’s dabbawala network is one of the world’s most studied examples of flawless operational coordination. Harvard Business School’s case on the dabbawala system describes it as achieving “6 Sigma equivalent or better” service performance through a low-cost and simple operating model.
The lesson is very clear- every handoff carries context.
A dabba leaves a home, reaches a collection point, travels through Mumbai’s local train network, gets sorted, changes hands multiple times, reaches an office, and still arrives with the right person at the right time. The person carrying it at each stage may not know the full story of the family who packed it. But the system knows enough. The code, the route, the destination, and the accountability travel with the dabba. That invisible continuity is what makes the system extraordinary and its exactly what most banks fail to replicate in their customer journeys.
Now look at a retail lending journey.
A customer applies for a home loan through a bank’s app. The interface is smooth. The form is clean. Some details are pre-filled. Documents are uploaded. The customer feels progress. In that moment, the bank feels ahead. And then, the file moves.
The app shows one version of the journey. The relationship manager sees another. Credit sees a case. Operations sees pending conditions. The call centre sees a status code. The customer sees only one bank. That gap between ‘one bank’ in the customer’s mind and ‘many internal realities’ inside the institution is where trust begins to fall flat.
This is not because banks are careless. It is because banking has digitized function by function. Acquisition improved. Credit got better. Risk models sharpened. Compliance tightened. Servicing got more structured. But amidst all of this, the customer does not experience functions. The customer experiences flow.
And when flow breaks, the customer does not say, ‘Your LOS and CRM are not exchanging the right event triggers.’
They say, ‘Bank ko bhi clarity nahi.’ This sentence carries real damage.
For the bank, a delayed file may be a turnaround time issue. For the customer, it is a builder payment waiting, a family decision on hold, a business expansion delayed, or a life milestone stuck in uncertainty. Inside the bank, the file may be moving. But if the customer cannot see it, trust it, or understand it, the journey feels stuck.
This is where customer expectations have changed permanently. India is now deeply habituated to real-time digital behaviour. A Government of India PIB release notes that UPI transaction volume expanded from 2 crore transactions in FY2016–17 to over 24,162 crore transactions in FY2025–26, while transaction value rose from ₹0.07 lakh crore to approximately ₹314 lakh crore. The same release states that UPI had over 700 banks live by March 2026 and captured 49% of global real-time payment volume in 2025.
That kind of scale changes what people consider normal. PwC’s Indian Payments Handbook 2025–2030 projected India’s digital payments volume to grow from 206 billion transactions in FY25 to 617 billion in FY30, with value rising from INR 299 trillion to INR 907 trillion.
So, the customer walking into a lending journey is not digitally naïve. They are trained by daily digital experiences. They can track a food order, track a cab, track a medicine delivery, track an ecommerce parcel. Not just that, they can see a payment succeed instantly. They know when an order has been accepted, when it has moved, when it is delayed, and who is responsible next.
Then the same customer applies for a ₹60 lakh home loan and receives one generic message: “Your application is being processed.”
That comparison may feel unfair to banks. Lending is not food delivery. Credit risk, documentation, legal verification, property checks, fraud controls, compliance, and regulatory obligations make lending far more complex. But the harsh reality is that customers don’t compare complexity. They compare clarity.
And on clarity, many lending journeys still underperform.
The issue is not that nothing is digital. The issue is that the digital parts do not always remember each other. A known customer is asked to re-submit information already available elsewhere in the bank. A document uploaded at onboarding is requested again by another team. A status visible internally is not visible to the customer. A relationship manager cannot confidently answer the same question the customer is asking the helpline. A pending condition is discovered only after days of silence.
This is not a technology gap- an orchestration problem.
The dabbawala does not restart the tiffin’s identity at every station. The code travels, the destination travels, and the responsibility travels. In lending, the same should be true of customer identity, document status, decision stage, pending actions, and ownership.
- Customer context should move seamlessly with the application if the borrower is already known to the bank
- Credit events should automatically update the journey when a file is opened
- Operational requests should tell the customer exactly which document, is needed, why and by when
Not every complaint is about status visibility or handoffs. But the signal is clear – lending is not only a growth engine, it’s also a major customer experience battleground.
Every repeated document request- weakens it.
Every moment where the customer feels like they are explaining themselves again to their own bank- weakens it.
So the question for every retail lending leader is simple:
Where does your customer’s context break? Between app and branch? Between onboarding and credit? Between credit and operations? Between operations and customer communication? Between RM and call centre?
Your bank may be ahead in parts. But if the journey is fragmented, the customer experience is still behind?
