AFP, Mumbai :
After dealing with two coronavirus funerals in two weeks, Raj Sharma was too grief-stricken to negotiate a third with profiteering hearse drivers and crematoriums, so he turned to one of the many new businesses that have sprung up around India helping struggling people while also turning a tidy profit.
Sharma – not his real name – was reeling from the loss of a third friend when he heard of Anthyesti Funeral Services, which provides “end-to-end” coronavirus funerals in four cities.
“They pick up the body from the hospital and take care of everything,” the 48-year-old New Delhi professor told AFP.
Anthyesti’s Covid package cost about 30,000 rupees ($400) – a bargain compared with the prices charged by hearse services that can be up to five times higher.
It brought him “mental peace that is worth any price”.
The company is one example of how entrepreneurs are discovering opportunities as India grapples with a worsening coronavirus crisis, offering a range of new services from funerals to Bollywood film set cleaners to budget deliveries.
Anthyesti – which means “last sacrifice” in Sanskrit – was founded in 2016 by former software engineer Shruthi Reddy Sethi, who wanted to clean up India’s unregulated funeral industry.
But the 36-year-old never anticipated the dystopian impact of Covid-19, with shortages of space in morgues, ambulances and even wood for funeral pyres.
In many cases, relatives have had to wait days to bury or cremate their loved ones.
“Where do these families go? They’re just laying the bodies in a line at the cremation grounds, waiting for their turn to come,” Sethi told AFP.
“The biggest benefit that we are offering is that our team is actually doing the waiting on the client’s behalf.”
Sethi provides medical insurance for the cremation workers, undertakers, embalmers and ambulance drivers that Anthyesti relies on – a rarity in an industry notorious for exploiting poorly-paid labour.
The firm’s revenues increased 20 percent last year and she expects turnover to double in 2021.
While businesspeople like Sethi have adapted their firms during the Covid crisis, others have set up entirely new ventures.
