Dabba Cartel Ending Explained: What Happens to VivaLife? Are the Women Able to Get Out of the Drug Business?

Dabba Cartel is Netflix’s newest drama series that showcases five women who circumstantially come together due to various reasons to run a dabba service but slowly find themselves entangled in the drug business and get deeper and deeper into the quicksand. While Raji, Mala and eventually Shahida run this business for quick cash, Sheila ends up joining because of her past and a lust for adventure and danger. Unfortunately, this ends up becoming one of the biggest mistakes of all of their lives, resulting in irrevocable changes that destroy everything that they have built till then.

Netflix’s Dabba Cartel has 7 episodes, each with a runtime of around 45 – 50 minutes.

Dabba Cartel Ending Explained

The series opens with a simple premise — Raji and Mala run a dabba service in their housing complex, VivaLife, that runs relatively well. It’s fulfilling work for Raji and brings an extra income for them both. In parallel, we see that VivaLife Pharmaceutical Company is facing quite the flack in the media because one of their banned medicines, Modella (containing Fentanyl), is being sold in different parts of India and has caused a huge accident that has resulted in a woman’s death.

These two plots run parallel to one another — while things get more and more complicated with Raji’s business, things get more complicated in VivaLife, particularly for Shankar, who is trying desperately to get the Modella incident under wraps because it will prove to be disastrous for the company as well as him. Following VivaLife Pharma is Pathak from the FDSO, who gets Preeti appointed from the police station to escort him in his investigation.

Raji’s business faces the first roadblock when she is asked by the society’s secretary to stop her business. She moves to a rented flat with Shahida’s help. The next roadblock comes along when Mala starts to put marijuana in some of the tiffins after her boyfriend threatens her, without Raji’s knowledge. Mala gets caught when Shahida finds a bag of marijuana in the house and immediately accuses them of doing illegal activities. With increased pressure from Hari to move to Germany and with a baby on the way, Raji, against her better judgment, decides to go along with the ploy after seeing the money coming in. Unfortunately for them, the dabba service becomes such a great way to pass the weed that the head honcho, Chavan, decides to pass MDMA instead of weed through the network, hoping for better returns.

Of course, the desperation to come out of their financial struggles blinds the women from the difficult situation that they are putting themselves into and after agreeing to sell the MDMA, Mala holds the packet hostage over the sink and threatens to destroy it if her boyfriend doesn’t destroy the nude video that he is blackmailing her with. However, even though Raji destroys his phone to remove any chance of the video resurfacing, Mala still dumps the packet into the sink and this leads to the start of their downfall. Chavan gets word of this mistake and holds the women accountable for the mishap and just when they are about to be murdered, Sheila, who was already suspicious of Raji’s whereabouts, walks into the house to save the women.

At VivaLife, Pathak and Preeti look deeper into the company’s files for proof of Modella and Stravinol, another similar drug that the company used to sell in the USA. However, facing roadblocks at every turn, Preeti advises Pathak to go the Amritsar where the accident had taken place while she continues to keep an eye on everyone in Mumbai. She strikes up a friendship with the VivaLife housing committee’s secretary and starts to tail everyone living there. From there she learns of Bhowmick Bose, the employee who was in charge of making the drug and who has now disappeared. Preeti realises that Shankar has something to do with this ordeal, while Pathak, comes to know that Modella is being prescribed by doctors and the drug is being supplied through illegal channels. On the other hand, Raji’s husband Hari, in a bid to get the job in Germany, oils up to Shankar and his keen eye helps his boss to navigate several challenging circumstances as he slowly gets close to him.

Back at the dabba service, Raji and the women decide to sell the MDMA to make up for Chavan’s losses, after Sheila convinces them that this is the only way that they stay alive. They make up for the losses within a month but, unbeknownst to everyone else, Sheila, realising that this means that she goes back to her boring life of making food and watching serials, decides to keep selling the drugs and strikes up a deal with Chavan. Of course, it doesn’t go over well with the others and soon enough, the rented house is flooded and they decide to keep the money with Varuna, whose failing business becomes the perfect blackmail material for Shahida and Sheila to tap into. Of course, Varuna decides to go behind everyone’s backs and use the money to pay off all of her debts, leaving nothing to pay Chavan back with.

Chavan kidnaps Raji to pressurise Sheila to give him his money and she takes Moushumi’s help to get Raji out of the mess. However, the latter refuses to help her further, fearing her own boss’s wrath against her. With no other options, the gang get in touch with Bhowmick and he and Raji create a new drug to push to the market and make a ton of money by mixing Modella and Fentanyl. They name it Mithai and it starts to sell at a rapid pace. They find the Modella after Shankar and Hari, in the bid to get rid of their evidence, rush out of the laboratory just as Preeti gets there and keeps the van in the VivaLife housing complex which the women steal during the Ganpati Festival.

As tensions rise between Hari and Raji, who starts to suspect that there’s something odd going on with his wife and her business, things come to a head.

Dabba Cartel Episode 7

In the Dabba Cartel finale, Raji and her group are too deep into the business. With none of the others wanting to stop selling the drugs because of the money that it is raking in, Raji is left distraught at the possibility of being at Chavan’s mercy for the rest of her life. However, as it turns out, Moushumi’s boss, Chacko, has been keeping an eye on the operation and brings the women to his house. There, he directs them to work for him and eventually makes Raji kill Moushumi for double-crossing him. The women are left traumatised but more so because shocking secrets come to light. It turns out that Hari is actually not Sheila’s son, he is Moushumi’s. When Sheila had murdered the police officer years ago, Moushumi had asked her to take her son, Hari, with her into hiding, fearing for his safety. Hari also parallelly finds the documents proving this in his house as he goes through Raji and Sheila’s things after suspecting them to be up to something.

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Meanwhile, Bhowmick gets the documents necessary to prove VivaLife’s corrupt practices from Varuna, who emails them from Shankar’s laptop. He, however, works with Pathak to expose the company’s lies to the media after realising that the high-ranking officials are all corrupt and under VivaLife’s thumb. With no other choice but to investigate, Pathak tells Bhowmick about Mithai, which is a similar composition to Modella, not knowing that he was the one who made it. He rushes off home but Preeti later finds him dead. Meanwhile, Shankar takes the fall for the VivaLife mess and steps down from his position while Sheila and Raji come back home to find Hari missing but they are far too traumatised to notice at first.

In the last scene, we see Sheila calling Rafiq and asking for assistance, indicating that she will be exacting revenge on Chacko for Moushumi’s death and the story is just getting started.

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