Funeral services coming under the entrepreneurial gambit; technology playing a major role

Although India has come a long way in terms of startup ecosystem’s maturity, funeral management services still seem a bit odd. However, startups such as Mokshshil and Anthyesti, are breaking those conventions and providing funeral services in a highly unorganized and unstructured sector. These are one stop solution startups that provides personalized and professional end-to-end funeral management services as per the requirements of the deceased family members with authentic rituals performed by well versed priests. Services such as booking a vehicle, finding hospitals, priests, prayers halls, cremation centres, organ donation centres, mobile freezer, shraadh service, catering etc. are provided by these startups.

While Anthyesti clocked revenues of INR6 lakh in FY16 on the back of 150 funerals, Mokshshil was a bit ahead with ~INR10 lakh. One of the founders of such started said that “Responses have been very positive and the growth has been quite well since the more we went deep into the services there were quite a lot of windows of opportunity which opened up. New services were introduced which helped our clients. There has been a steady increase in the turnover. As more and more people migrate within the country, nuclear families increase, with a population of 1.3 billion and an average death of 13000 people every day, this will become one of the basic services in the country”.

Naturally, the startups are targeting neutral families in Tier-1 cities as their bread and butter customers since they are the most vulnerable to organizing the funeral aspects in their family where only quite a few people turn up.