For over a century, bicycle couriers have been ferrying food boxes around Mumbai – an approach that works as well as ever

Imagine trying to cook – and then deliver, on time – 200,000 hot lunches every day, in the centre of a city where traffic is regularly gridlocked. And then imagine having to pick up and return the food containers, collect the money, and pay the drivers – most of whom cannot read or write.

The logistics and organisation needed would almost certainly defeat the best efforts of any European or US food chain, airline or supermarket group, perplex corporate distribution teams, and bamboozle efficiency-conscious business leaders. But the old ways are often the best ways; in a world of innovation, sometimes the most innovative thing you can do is to keep doing what you always did.

Such is the case in Mumbai, where a small miracle has been taking place daily for more than 100 years. Nearly every working day, 5,000 or more white-capped "dabbawallas" get on their pedal bikes, each loaded with about 40 lunches packed in steel or plastic containers called "tiffins". Weaving their way through the throngs of India's business capital, they deliver to workers in shops and offices, factory hands, and businesses. Their products include everything from daal, vegetables, chapatis and rice to exotic Mexican and macrobiotic specialities. On average, just one meal in 16m gets delivered late.

It is testimony to what ordinary people can achieve. But what excites corporate leaders such as Richard Branson, Harvard business school professors, and even governments is that the dabbawallas are turning western business models inside out.

Dabbawallas are recognised as a textbook example of efficiency and organisation but, instead of using a complex, technology-driven administrative system, they have built a giant buiness on trust, experience and, above all, the knowledge and intelligence of families. The dabbawallas do not need layers of complicated management, computers or even mobile phones.

Earlier this year, Arvind Talekar, who worked as a dabbawalla for two years and is now a spokesman for the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers, came to Dubai for the Gulf Co-operation Council Third and Fourth Line Leaders' Development Conference.

"We keep it simple," he says. "I have seen that many times technology doesn't work. So, it is best not to use it because if it fails, then we can't deliver the lunch boxes on time. We are illiterates and we prefer to keep a mental note. We don't depend on gadgets."

In an increasingly globalised world, the west is now looking east and south, to emerging economies, for new business models. In the process, it is finding some unique ways of doing things; it's a case of "the children teaching their parents", says Alexander Settles, a professor of corporate governance at Moscow State University.

Africa, once considered hopeless for business innovation, is now exporting pioneering ideas that are being picked up in Europe and the US. Its young population and its lack of infrasructure has encouraged entrepreneurs and corporations to leapfrog the west.