Think coffins, and for most people familiar with pop culture, images from films tend to flit to mind, besides Count Dracula. However, the significance of a coffin has always been more than just a burial box. A final farewell to loved ones, it transcends its physical importance into something more intangible. And catering to this rather emotional market are a small army of coffin makers in the city. In the business for about a decade and some, they tell us how they got started and what makes the profession more than just about making a wooden box.
“Customers are slowly moving towards personalised or status-defining coffins and as service providers, we have also adopted new ways of manufacturing. Owing to these changes, the secret to a successful enterprise is the ‘personal touch’ – communicating with your client and understanding what they are going through,” says Ivor Fernandez who has been supplying coffins in the city since 2002.
As simple as the box may seem, all coffins begin as mere sheets of plywood and other eco-friendly mild density fibreboards (MDF) that are later hammered together, painted and padded on the inside to become one’s final resting place. However, requirements vary depending on what a person may want either for themselves or their loved ones.
“The regular coffin is a V-shaped plywood box with a black pall (for married people) or white pall (unmarried). This usually ranges between `1,000 and `5,000,” explains Ameeruddin who has been running Paradise Coffin Dealers in Boiguda for the past 12 years. He sells about about 15 coffins a week outside Gandhi Hospital.
In Malkaram, Raju Davis’ coffins are preferred for their technique. “Besides plywood, we also use rosewood and teakwood. But we only spray paint them,” says Raju whose family has been in the business since his grand father started it. As it turns out, his grand father picked up a trick or two from Italian coffin makers in his day.
While these are the more simpler versions, Fernandez’s Heaven Bound is more stylistic and fine. Catering to a wide range of clients and budgets, Heaven Bound provides coffins that are foam padded on the inside, polished on the outside, frilled with lace and even perfumed!
“For many it is a profit-driven business, but you will lose your customers unless you sell the product right. You need to market it right,” says the former sales trainer from the Middle East.
Driven into the business after he faced a tough time sourcing a coffin upon his father’s demise, Fernandez’s business has managed to become one of the most sought after. His own tragedy, he says, is what gives him the edge. “Small scale dealers lack an insight into people’s emotions. They lack the understanding required to communicate with the client. After all, these are people who have lost somebody close.”
Launching his own company post studying the coffin industry in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, Heaven Bound has many facilities and can deliver in as short a notice as four hours.
“We provide body freezers, transport the body from homes to the church to the graveyard, make perfumed coffins, give a complimentary cross engraved with the deceased’s name and more,” he informs.
Other coffin makers have also begun to extend other funeral services such as transport and burial facilities.
Selling about 170 coffins per month, the average size is around 6 by 2 feet or a jumbo-sized 6.5 by 2.5 feet.
Noting that over here the British style is more preferred, Fernandez adds, “People in Hyderabad like cloth. But in Goa, coffins are very Portuguese. They like velvet up there.”
Besides providing services within the city, coffin makers also provide services for ‘out-station’ clients.
“When a non-localite passes away, the body needs to be taken back to its native place. We then make coffins that can be transported in flights,” says Ameeruddin, who has catered to customers from even Kashmir and Gujarat. These boxes are usually fitted with aluminium interiors.
Fernandez who deals internationally speaks of high inventory maintenance as a must for expansion. “Plywood, nails, paints and mostly manpower are the resources that one has to be prepared to invest in,” he advises, thinking back on the `60,000 investment which has now expanded to a `45 lakh business.
But the biggest problem for local business is defecting labourers. Raju rues, “Once they are pick up the skills, they leave and start their own small scale businesses around the city.”
As the business grows and service providers increase, people as well are becoming more aware of the kind of coffin they’d like to be finally laid rest in. To that end, pre-ordering one’s own customised coffin is slowly but surely increasing.
“A young woman once asked me to paint butterflies on her future coffin,” recalls Fernandez, adding, “But we are yet to reach a stage where everyone will make their own customisations.”
Everyone in the business is unanimous though pointing out that today’s generation prefer expensive-looking coffins over traditional ones and consider their coffins a status symbol of sorts.
On the lavish end, a basic coffin is priced at `1,500, and go up as high as `8,000. The sky though is really the limit depending on how extravagant you’d want your final adieu to be.
