Funeral kits for $ale
Startups are cashing in on India’s elaborate funeral ceremonies.
MuMbai: From providing cow urine, incense and bamboo stretchers to booking a Hindu priest at the last minute, startups are seeking to cash in on India’s elaborate traditional funeral ceremonies.
Grieving families normally have to rush between shops buying dozens of items needed to say goodbye to loved ones but now online companies are selling “final rites kits”.
Many bereaved relatives – particularly busy professionals in India’s burgeoning cities – see the services as a godsend, but traditional family-run funeral shops say their businesses are hurting.
When Mumbai businessman Parag Mehta had to arrange a second family funeral in two weeks, he was short of time and ordered a kit online.
A box arrived containing 38 items for a Hindu ceremony including earthen pots, incense sticks, cow urine and dung, rice, sesame seeds and rose water.
“It made our lives easier in an extremely emotional and stressful time,” Mehta, 52, said.
Hindu funerals are complex affairs and typically involve anointing the body with sandalwood paste, the burning of cow dung and the breaking of coconuts.
Family members carry the deceased into the crematorium on a bamboo stretcher. They then circle the funeral pyre with an earthen pot before setting the body on fire.
The ashes are often immersed in the Ganges river.
Mehta purchased his kit from Mumbai-based startup SarvaPooja, whose name translates as “prayers for all”.
Its founder Nitesh Mehta, who is no relation to Parag, said he had sold around 2,000 kits since launching the website just under a year ago.
The specific nature of Hindu ceremonies – coupled with a requirement to cremate the body ideally within 24 hours or three days at the most – presented a gap in the market for a onestop solution, Mehta said.
“We decided to create a localised solution for a very Indian problem,” said Mehta, a computer engineer, who was based in the United States for 15 years.
The kit – which is sold online and in a handful of Indian cities – can be used by most traditional Hindu communities, such as Jains and Gujaratis, as well as by followers of the Sikh faith.