Shradhanjali – An Online Memorial Portal

Shrdhanjali.com is India’s first and only memorial portal where you can create a portal for your loved ones who are no more but can be remembered and celebrated by all the members who dearly miss them.

We’ll not talk much and directly get in converstaion with Vivek to learn more about Shradhanjali.com

Death is a touchy topic and we seldom talk about it, although it is an inevitable part of everyone’s lives.  Is it tough to tell people about your Startup?  How has it been received so far?

True, it is touchy topic. Yet, we love to remember our parted loved ones and we wish to relive their lives and pass on their teachings, virtues, achievements to our future generations. When we get complete details of gandhiji, shahid bhagat singh, sardar patel and all political leaders and freedom fighters on internet but when it comes to our ancestors we do not find a single page of information. With shradhanjali.com it will not be the case again, once profile is uploaded on it within sometime google will start giving search results and people across the world will be able to search complete information about their loved ones. (photos, family details, biography, condolence messages etc)

Tell us the story behind Startup ( when & why it was founded), and any important milestones so far.

The portal was founded in June 2010 however, came into operations in early 2012. The idea came in fluke while having snacks as the snacks were served on piece of newspaper obituary column page we feel bit disturbed and sad and thought cant these be presented in some more respectable and presentable manner which also stays forever and can be accessed globally and be remembered and referred? this question gave birth to Shradhanjali.com

The important milestones were:

• Appreciation letter from Hon. Chief Minister of Gujarat Shri Narendra Modi

• Story published in world’s largest gujarati magazine Chitralekha.

• Interview by MY FM (bhaskar group): https://soundcloud.com/aashipathan/shradhanjali-interview
• Startup story covered by yourstory.in: http://yourstory.in/2013/06/make-your-departed-family-members-memory-live-on-ever-after-on-shradhanjali-com/

Take us through the features of Shradhanjali.

Some of the salient features are:

• Unlimited photos

• Biography (multiple languages available)

• Unlimited condolence messages (multiple languages available)

• Family details

• Embedded videos

• Death and birth anniversary reminders

• Choice of religious background music  (bhajan, chants, shlokas etc)

• Complete control to edit/ update profile with utmost ease

Please tell us about the Franchise Option available on the website. What exactly do they do? And how do you plan to market your product?

We promote this service through retail agencies there is no fees. Anyone can join as agency they will earn INR 1000 per applications currently majority of the agencies are retired professionals, advertising agencies.

I believe the forum is open and anyone can write condolences. This is fine for public personalities, but from a personal perspective – I would only want my family and people i wish to share obituary with to be able to view & comment on it.  Please share your thoughts on this.

True. Yet there are many people who may wish to post condolence message to the divine soul. Yet we have given control to the client options are 1. Auto approve condolence message 2. With user approval
Here, if client has chosen condolence message with user approval then anyone will be able to post message but it will only be displayed on the portal if user approves that. User can later publish, hide and delete condolence message.  User has all the rights to delete and hide any of the condolence messages at any point in time. This feature is given to maintain decorum of the profile and no one can post offended message which can hurt anyone.

Could you share with us any numbers – no. of people who have signed up so far, and any unique hits your website receives every month. Any numbers that would support the article.

We have more than 110 paid profiles and rest are of celebrities and eminent personalities which we have published out of our love and respect to pay tribute.
Stats:
Frequency : 28,800
Searches : 479
Traffic : 2564984

What are the future plans for Shradhanjali?

Once we receive VC/angel funds we plan to expand in the following states and come out as more popular and useful brand
Maharashtra, Karnataka, MP, rajasthan and Andhrapradesh. We also think to make strategic  tieups with media houses providing obituary/ memorial services in print media.

Tell us about the Founders and their backgrounds. Please tell us about your initial investment, whether you have break even and if you are looking for funding at the moment.

Vimal Popat

A commerce graduate with a view to offer something exciting and useful to the society ; Vimal left the well settled job and took plunge into entrepreneurship. He holds in access of 12 years of experience into sales and man management and developing successful dealerships and agencies. He believes in raising the bar and challenge the limits.

He has successfully managed and developed dealer network with Castrol India ltd. and later managed unit of more than 100 successful financial advisors with Tata aig wherein he created many records. His core expertise lies in concept development, execution, testing and man management.

Vivek Vyas

Vivek is a first generation entrepreneur  having 7 years plus experience in sales and training. He holds various professional qualifications and believes constant learning as a part of professional life. An initiator and a team player who had been frequently assigned leadership tasks.  He was instrumental in developing and training Baroda module bancassurance team of SBI and taking it nationally no.1 during his tenure. His core competency lies in training, relationship management and network development.

He has prepared and rolled out many activities and initiatives for promoting sales, recruitment and agencies which were implemented and proved to be successful. His competency lies in training and network development and wants to plug the gap between real and virtual world.

The investment has crossed 30 lakh yes, we are looking for funding mainly for branding and awareness campaigns and some to be invested for technology advancements. no, we are yet to break even but we will break even in the beginning on next year.

If there is one quality that an entrepreneur must possess in order to succeed – what would be it?

As they say if you are going through hell, keep going. Perseverance is the key any entrepreneur must possess.