Retired textile engineer Sunil Kumar Shukla and his wife Sunita Shukla have pre-booked their funeral service. The Ahmedabad-based couple have registered themselves on Mokshshil.com, permitting the firm to perform the final rites of passage keeping their religious sensibilities in mind. "I'm 75 years old and my wife is 70. Our children live abroad. We're at a stage in life when emergencies can strike us any time. We have to be prepared," said Shukla.
Shukla had no qualms in prepping for his end. "Our children have told us they will fly down whenever they need to be around. But I have seen instances in my neighbourhood where spouses were left with a few friends to handle the entire thing, including the last rites," he said. Mokshshil can handle everything from embalming and hearse services to cremation and obtaining the death certificate. But Shukla, for now, has signed up for the Rs 4,500 basic service that includes hearse service, rituals, and cremation.
Services offered
Several Indian ventures have emerged to handle such grave matters. Handling death is always difficult, and has become more tough in recent times by the fact that our closest kin, whose responsibility traditionally has been to deal with such eventualities, are often far away and unfamiliar with the local setup. Given the phenomenal increase in travel, death also often happens in locations far from where the final rites need to be performed. Those create additional complications, including the need to deal with repatriation procedures if the death happens overseas. Some ventures help to deal even with that.
Varanasi-based Kashimoksha.com has many NRIs signing up on their platform. Part of a registered society called Kashi Moksha Incorporation, it performs a host of death-related services, including arranging for Skype transmissions of the funeral service for those far away. "We even hold death anniversary rituals on behalf of the deceased's family members. After conducting the rituals, we send the CD to the families," said Rupsi Gupta, head of marketing at Kashimoksha.com.
Mokshshil is the brainchild of Ahmedabad professors Bilva Desai and Abhijeet Singh. They founded it as a college project, but since September, it has morphed into a funeral services startup offering end-to-end services. "We have a simple online form to fill up and a helpline on the portal to assist families of the deceased. We have already performed 20 cremations," Singh said. Mokshshil is working to handle even organ donations for those who want it.
Mumbai-based Indian Funeral Service (IFS) started in 1989, but in the last decade became one of the first to offer many of its services online. Today, repatriation of bodies has become an important service that it provides. "When you repatriate bodies across countries, you need immigration clearances, health department approval, as also police and customs permissions," said Elroy Noronha, co-founder of IFS. The company works with Embassies and Consulates and more than 200 companies around the world to facilitate the process. It now does more than 20 international repatriations every month.
Rajkot-based Shradhanjali.com allows its members to post pictures, videos, life history and family tree on the portal to create a lasting memorial for future generations to visit. Anybody can post condolence messages and pay tributes on the portal from anywhere in the world. Shradhanjali sends email reminders on birth and death anniversaries to relatives.
"We have 450 members who pay Rs 5,000 as subscription fee to post online memorials for 30 years," said Vivek Vyas and Vimal Popat, who founded Shradhanjali.com in 2011. The duo, who worked as sales professionals in Tata AIG General Insurance, said the thought first came to them when they were once having samosas on a crumbled newspaper with obituaries all over it. "It saddened us that beyond reading the scant announcement of deaths, there was no way for family and friends living far away to participate in a memorial service," Vyas said.
Starting up to deal with death
US-based angel funding portal Angel List has 54 funeral service ventures listed on it that have raised funds through the platform. Some 933 investors have put money in them.
Elysium Space is one of these ventures. The venture says they combine experience from major NASA space missions and funeral business knowledge. "We offer memorial spaceflights to have a portion of the departed's ashes launched into Earth or lunar orbit. Our services are affordable and target the mass market," Elysium says.
(Originally published in The Times of India; Images for representative purposes only)
