One camera’s gaze was fixed on the freezer box placed at the center of a modest apartment hall, where people shifted in their seats, arriving and leaving in quiet intervals. Another captured the face at intervals, moving in for brief close-ups. Ambient sounds were muted; a low devotional track played in their place.
Anyone with the link and password could join the livestream from anywhere, take a final look at the departed, the antim darshan, and mark their presence for the bereaved. This was how darshan.ai began.
As people made homes far from where they had begun, distance became easier to cross, though not always in time. Movement required planning. Death did not. When it occurred, there was little time to arrive. The body had to be attended to without delay, and the last viewing was brief. In those moments, one was either present, or not.
Periods of restricted movement—during pandemics, conflicts, and other circumstances—made such absences more common. For most, not being present became inseparable from the grief.
Technology offered a solution: the possibility of attending funeral rites remotely.
In its initial phase, the platform operated through tie-ups with local funeral service providers. The bereaved were onboarded onto the service with care. A designated executive helped them understand the security and privacy concerns. If needed, cameras were placed discreetly, positioned so as not to draw attention. The service was billed by the hour.
Over time, requests emerged. Some asked if those joining remotely could interact with visitors on-site. Others wanted the coverage to extend beyond the last viewing, to include the rituals that followed. A few requested that mourning assemblies, held in the days after, also be streamed. The platform adapted to these requirements as its user base grew.
Feedback bypassed traditional metrics; the testimonials were less evaluative than expressive—‘I could see him one last time’, ‘It felt like I was there’, ‘I could join despite the time difference’. Inquiries soon shifted from how the service worked to where it would be available next.
For a service that depended on physical equipment and on-site personnel, expansion was not immediate. Growth required coordination across locations, and this proved difficult to sustain at scale.
It was at this stage that external funding was sought. Presentations were prepared, projections outlined, and use-cases demonstrated. Any doubts about the market size vanished when the founders pitched death as the ultimate recurring revenue: ‘While an individual’s death is unpredictable, the annual mortality rate of ten million people is remarkably stable.’
After several rounds of discussions, investment was secured.
The founding team examined where value could be consolidated. Over time, the platform moved to acquire the local funeral service providers it had previously partnered with. It established tie-ups with palliative care centres, and with hospital departments that dealt with terminal or emergency cases. Those who performed ritual services were invited to join the platform, often at minimal commissions, supplemented by incentives.
Services extended beyond the last viewing, continuing until the remains were attended to. The users, the bereaved still in the immediate fog of grief, could click through multiple drop-down menus for ritual packages based on their location, religion and budget. While the basic farewell package included services of priest, livestream and cremation slot, the advanced ones included extended rituals like immersions of the remains at a chosen holy place. The families could either join on these pilgrimages or leave it to the priests to conduct them.
These integrations repositioned the platform as a comprehensive provider of end-of-life logistics. Growth no longer relied on word-of-mouth; it was now introduced at the point of care in hospitals, palliative centres, and by the very practitioners conducting the rites.
Streamlining the processes became a priority as the user base scaled. The platform identified that ‘choice fatigue’ was a primary deterrent for those dealing with sudden loss. In its documentation and interface, the platform replaced ‘user’ with ‘the Kin,’ framing the service as a familial extension rather than a utility. To avoid the friction of family disputes, the platform introduced ‘Verified Kin’ protocols. This paved the way for the ‘one-(final-)click’ service, where the Kin could initiate a total logistical takeover—collection, rituals, and remains—with a single interaction.
In cases involving terminal illness, the platform began to facilitate conversations around the patient’s final wishes—where the remains were to be taken, how the mourning assembly would be arranged, including the food to be served, and how they wished to be remembered.
The platform’s messaging reflected this shift. It emphasised ease, continuity, and completion. Addressing the burden of logistics, one campaign suggested, ‘Your grief doesn’t deserve distractions. We’ll handle the world; you handle the goodbye.’
And the response and reviews reflected the ease. ‘My fiercely independent sister died in peace despite the excruciating pain she endured. She never wanted to be a burden, and she had planned her own farewell. Grateful to darshan.ai for not letting her down,’ read a testimonial from the family of a cancer patient.
The platform’s expansion, and its position as a trailblazer, brought in further investment. The margins, however, remained low. Reducing initial incentives to third-party services and increasing their commissions made only marginal difference. A significant portion of revenue was absorbed by the systems required to manage the entire death cycle of an account, along with the follow-up services offered to those left behind.
Competition, though still limited, had begun to take shape. Other platforms emerged, offering near-identical services with minor variations. Retaining users became critical. So did securing the market before it could fragment. The pressure was constant, and it altered the way the platform understood growth.
One of the primary challenges of the platform was that, while users were often grateful for its existence, it remained tied to a moment of loss. The association was not one they wished to retain. The application was uninstalled at the first opportunity. The platform did not resist this; in fact, it was designed to allow for easy exit.
This, however, posed a problem. Its success could not be measured through the usual metrics of retention or repeat engagement. With growing pressure from investors, the need for sustained presence became more pronounced, particularly across social platforms. Traditional advertising—billboards, television—had limited reach.
After a period of internal discussions, the limitation was articulated more clearly.
‘Death logistics, as a marketplace, has taken us this far,’ the CEO said at an all-hands meeting. ‘But it won’t take us where we intend to go. We need to move from “grieving made convenient” to something that allows for continued engagement. The Kin won’t come back to us until another tragedy. We need to find another set of users who remain within the system beyond the event itself, otherwise scale will remain limited.’
The problem, as it was increasingly understood, was not death. It was the duration. How to move from one to the other remained an open question.
It remained so until the death of a young actor, rising and widely followed, brought the question into focus. The circumstances were unclear. Media speculation moved quickly: suicide, substance use, or foul play involving his girlfriend, a much-hated actress. The coverage intensified, and with it, public attention.
The platform’s internal team recognized the moment. They approached the family and sought permission to livestream the funeral. It was presented as access for those who could not be present, for those who wished to pay their respects. It was also framed as documentation: a complete and uninterrupted record, should the circumstances of the death require further scrutiny.
The funeral, in its entirety, was streamed, marked by a small red indicator in the corner of the screen. New emojis and avatars were introduced overnight. Viewers could assume the likeness of characters the actor had played. Each tap on the lotus icon released a digital flower at his feet; clicking the candle icon placed a small, steady flame above his head. A chat window ran alongside the stream, filling steadily with messages of shock, disbelief, and grief.
Media outlets, large and small, pulled clips from the livestream for their coverage. ‘The nation mourns its most loved son.’, ‘The heartthrob gets the nation’s first digital antim-yatra.’ These were among the headlines the following day.
The topic continued to trend for weeks. Clips were circulated widely, particularly those from the final rites, and the moment his mother collapsed near the pyre. The internet obsessed over every single detail of the funeral—the fashionistas dissected who was insensitive to the occasion, the body language experts analyzed whose emotions were fake, and the fans kept notes of which of his colleagues did not attend the funeral and made them the villains of his story.
Alongside the actor’s death, darshan.ai trended as well. Messages thanking the platform flooded its social media accounts. ‘On days like this, you’re usually alone! Everybody is like why cry over a guy who is nothing to you. But with what darshan did last night, I felt my grief was understood,’ read a comment with most likes.
‘While celebrity rites are traditionally private, darshan.ai’s full-access stream collapsed that boundary,’ experts warned about ethics, which caught nobody’s attention.
The platform’s internal metrics recorded a sharp rise after the actor’s funeral. More third-party services came forward to enroll, willing to accept lower commissions to ride the momentum. The platform’s social media following grew exponentially. Enquiries for private streaming, particularly from wealthy and ultra-wealthy families, also increased. For a brief period, darshan.ai held sustained attention.
Not every day brings a celebrity death. And not every family was willing to yield its privacy.
As the internal teams continued to explore ways to keep the platform in public view, news emerged that members of the founding team had stepped down. ‘I am resigning from my position as co-founder of darshan.ai with immediate effect. I find its future direction misaligned with my ethics,’ read one statement. The development, along with the rumours that the company had been harvesting data like videos of the deceased and access to their digital assets, generated brief attention within start-up circles, but it did not sustain.
Within weeks, the company announced a significant increase in valuation, alongside fresh foreign investment.
While continuing its core services, the platform initiated a new experiment. Following a media outlet’s cover story on old-age homes, one case drew particular attention: a terminally ill woman whose family had refused to attend her funeral.
Her story was recounted in fragments. She had married a married man with children, against her family’s wishes, and had no children of her own. After his death, she moved into an old-age home. She now feared she would die without anyone to claim her.
The marketing team decided to curate her loneliness. She was assured that her story would be told, that her death would not pass unnoticed, and that she would be mourned. Consent was obtained to document both her life and her final days. The platform produced a short film, framed around sacrifice, love, and abandonment, and released it shortly before her death, when doctors had indicated that the end was near.
Funds were deployed to generate interest. The platform collaborated with the media outlet that had first reported her story and engaged content creators with large followings to amplify it. The response was gradual at first, then began to build.
By the day of the funeral, engagement had intensified. The stream covered the proceedings in detail, at times lingering on moments that had not previously been made visible—the preparation of the body, the rituals that followed. Viewer counts rose steadily. The emojis introduced during the actor’s funeral were now monetised. ‘Donate Rs 50 to have the roses stay at her feet for 2 min. All the proceedings would go to the old-age home,’ a scrolling statement said.
Many praised darshan.ai for what was described as an act of collective care. ‘Nobody deserves to die as an orphan. If families cannot stand up, communities will,’ read one widely shared response. Others traced her relatives and directed anger towards them, subjecting them to public abuse.
The prayer meeting held at the old-age home, in memory of the woman, drew an unprecedented crowd. The gathering swelled beyond capacity, and a brief stampede left several injured. A police case was registered against darshan.ai.
The woman’s family also filed a lawsuit, alleging public humiliation and endangerment. The platform, however, navigated these challenges through existing gaps in digital regulation and emerged largely unaffected. The ‘Terms of Service’, which ‘The Kin’ had accepted with a single click, effectively indemnified the company against physical site hazards.
Concerns raised by experts continued, pointing to violations, overreach, and the absence of clear boundaries, but they struggled to gain sustained attention.
The visibility generated by these incidents enabled the platform to expand rapidly across cities and towns. Advanced systems were introduced—predictive models estimating death rates in specific regions, dynamic pricing for cremation slots, AI-based grief support for those unable to access therapists, and local-language interfaces. Rituals were increasingly digitized, reducing the need for physical presence. Using darshan.ai for death became, over time, common. Competitors lagged behind, unable to match the breadth of services offered.
As the platform continued to track celebrity and controversial deaths—family suicides, honour killings—another event disrupted its trajectory. In a rural district, a group of children playing in a school ground collapsed and died without immediate explanation. The news spread rapidly. The platform moved in.
Postmortems were conducted, reports issued, bodies returned. The funerals started nearly at once. Streams went live in parallel. A single interface held them together: one window, many screens, each marked Live.
Feeds multiplied. Some faltered and resumed. Others overlapped with rituals unfolding at different speeds, voices out of sync, instructions repeated, corrected, resumed again. The viewer could move between them, enlarge one, minimize another, return, refresh. The order did not hold.
The frames zoomed in bluish faces of the dead, and red-rimmed eyes of those left behind. The focus shifted, not always deliberately, from one funeral to another. A chant in one window carried faintly into another. A hand raised in one frame seemed to answer a gesture elsewhere. Many on social media complained that they could not watch the streaming as it caused headaches and nausea.
Days later, grief gave way to anger. Reports of a toxic gas leak from a nearby industrial unit circulated, leading to protests in the region, directed at the company held responsible for the leak. Legal actions followed.
Within this atmosphere, darshan.ai was recast once again as a facilitator of collective mourning. At the same time, it faced pressure from multiple sides. Requests were made to remove clips of the incident from circulation. Families were approached with offers of compensation in exchange for legal complaints citing violations of privacy.
Before the situation stabilised, another incident unfolded elsewhere. Students participating in a peaceful protest were met with force, resulting in multiple casualties. In this case, the platform did not stream the funerals.
The absence was noted. Questions emerged. When the deaths involved those with limited agency, the platform appeared quickly, turning grief into viewable content. When the circumstances implicated institutions of power, it withdrew. The inconsistency led to a trend to cancel darshan.ai on social media, leading to significant drop in viewership.
The state took note of the public outcry. Independent lawyers filed petitions alleging violations of privacy and breaches of ethical conduct. Experts called for a new regulatory framework to address the rapid rise of such platforms, arguing that they were beginning to interfere with, and reshape, the processes of grieving and also the right to dignified death.
After a series of hearings and consultations, a set of regulations was introduced. The intent was not to shut down platforms like darshan.ai, but to bring them under defined oversight.
Private funeral streaming was subjected to stricter requirements. Platforms were required to obtain explicit consent through detailed agreements, with all major clauses explained in person. Standardised digital acceptance like checkboxes and automated summaries was no longer considered sufficient.
Public streaming was brought under a separate layer of scrutiny. Platforms were required to submit applications to a designated review committee and proceed only upon approval. Permissions could include conditions: restriction of certain portions, delayed broadcasts, moderated feeds, or access limited to approved viewers.
Non-compliance carried consequences. Violations could lead to suspension of services, or legal action against those responsible for operating the platform.
Years later, darshan.ai remained the market leader. It found its way to influence the regulations and laws in its favour. The platform had changed in ways that were no longer traceable to its beginnings. Its services extended across the country, reaching even the ancient city by the river where fires were said to never cease. The pyres burned through the day and into the night. Cameras stood where people once did. Crews moved in shifts. The streamings too did not cease.
At the company’s offices, feeds arrived continuously from across regions—processed, sorted, categorised. Metrics were generated in real time. Patterns were observed. One system determined how mourning was seen, and how it persisted, while the other analyzed the digital trails of the deceased.
‘We had to define our own path,’ the CEO said. ‘Death is unpredictable and its memory is brief. Our challenge was duration; sustaining engagement once the flowers fade. Streaming was only the beginning. I am pleased to announce the next phase: afterlife technology. We are no longer just recording death; we are ensuring a presence that never ends.’
Months later, attendees of a funeral received a notification. It took a moment to register. It had come from the deceased’s account. ‘Thank you for attending my farewell. We’ll stay in touch,’ it read.
