Zolani Matebese (CEO) and Thabisile Sethaba (COO) are co-founders of Sendoff, a South African and world first funeral app that enables anyone to quickly and easily plan, book and manage a funeral from their phone after a bereavement.
The idea came about when Zolani had to assist with arranging a funeral and dealt with what he terms “chaos” in the way that funerals are arranged.
“It is just so outdated and inefficient, you have to call and visit one or more funeral parlours in person, relive the trauma of the recent bereavement by explaining what has happened and what your wishes are and be funneled and pressure sold into whatever service makes sense for the funeral parlour at that time. You never really know if you’re doing all the right things, how to compare offerings for value and it is a vulnerable, scary and traumatic process”.
In thinking there had to be a better way to deal with the process of saying goodbye to a loved one, Sendoff was born, the Covid pandemic both made the product development harder and reinforced the need for a digital process to arrange funerals.
How does the App work?
Sendoff digitises the entire process of arranging a funeral. It’s like “Uber for funerals”:
You can arrange for a loved one to be picked up from a home or hospital once they have passed on, choose a casket or urn, select a funeral package, flowers, transport, catering, anything necessary for a funeral can be arranged via the app.
The app also has checklists detailing all the steps needed to properly plan a funeral and links to the Sendoff website with a data around how to do anything related to a funeral. This puts the user first and in control of the process, letting them focus on family, not admin.
Sendoff then allocates what the user has ordered to its network of fully vetted partners and manages the delivery to ensure complete satisfaction.
“Ultimately, we believe that the existing way that people arrange funerals is broken say the founders.
“If every startup is a hypothesis, ours is that an laser focus on providing a better, empathetic, frictionless way for people to arrange funeral processes will lead to more and more people choosing to use Sendoff.”
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