Empathy, an Israeli startup has come up with stealth with $13 million funding co-led by the VCs Catalyst and Aleph. The startup offers an AI-based platform for bereaved families and helps them organize affairs after death. In other words, it provides indirect assistance to the families that are attending the event by themselves.
Ron Gura, the CEO, and co-founder of the company stated that on average the family of a deceased can spend 500 hours dealing with various aspects related to the death of a loved one. With this in mind, the startup offers a digital companion in the form of native apps that are built to empower bereaved families. Despite being of the most natural things, no one prepares for death. Empathy aims at overcoming all the stigma and building a service that can help people deal with the loss of their loved ones. The company can either handle everything for itself or on behalf of people.
As per Gura, death is one of the last consumer sectors that has not been touched by innovation. The reason may be a regulatory barrier or human nature and fear that prevents us from talking about the inevitable truth of death. According to him, this narrative led to the inception of Empathy. The plan is to create assistance in this regard and build a business around the idea, making it as transparent as possible.
Joel Cutler, MD and co-founder of General Catalyst stated that the end-of-life industry is a large sector and can offer huge opportunities. He further added that the concept of Empathy is unique and it addresses both the emotional and logistic anguish of people’s loss.
The long-term plan of Empathy is to tackle other aspects like organizing affairs before death or tackling other problematic life events, like divorce and others.
