LumenUs helps automate tedious paperwork in occasions of grief

When Sara Tashakorinia’s husband died in a automotive accident eight years in the past, the very last thing she wanted was the roughly 570 hours of paperwork it takes, on common, to settle a cherished one’s affairs. But for hundreds of thousands of individuals annually, that is their actuality: a crushing loss, adopted by a soullessly mundane avalanche of tedious administrative work.

“The day your beloved passes away, you additionally get this honorary badge of a venture supervisor for a venture you had no thought about, attempting to navigate one thing and be taught one thing whenever you actually have zero info,” Tashakorinia advised TechCrunch.

After years of volunteering to assist others navigate what she needed to be taught on her personal, it occurred to Tashakorinia that AI may be capable to assist — not with the complicated, messy expertise of grieving and therapeutic, however with the least human elements of the method, like discovering the fitting tax types, submitting insurance coverage claims, and shutting down financial institution accounts.

The result’s LumenUs, the grief care platform that Tashakorinia based final 12 months to alleviate grieving households of a number of the administrative burden.

“I feel going by way of it, your threshold of ache is so excessive, and also you’re so misplaced that you simply don’t actually understand, why do individuals deal with you this manner? Why was I left with a stack of paperwork, and why was the funeral dwelling charging me a 300% markup on a casket?” Tashakorinia mentioned.

While Tashakorinia hopes LumenUs will finally help individuals all through the lifelong grieving course of, the startup will initially give attention to individuals within the fast aftermath of a loss of life. When individuals initially be part of the platform, they undergo an onboarding course of wherein they share details about the character of their specific scenario.

“We are asking very particular questions to grasp the authorized and monetary means, and their frame of mind, and that is solely to personalize who they’re, after which personalizing what occurred,” Tashakorinia mentioned.

From there, the platform organizes duties by urgency, serving to customers decipher what must be completed instantly and what can wait. In some circumstances, this may even assist individuals uncover that they’re entitled to cash that may assist ease the monetary burden of loss of life. In reality, billions of {dollars} in life insurance benefits go unclaimed as a result of individuals don’t know they’re accessible.

“We are utilizing AI to automate as a lot as we are able to to avoid wasting time throughout this course of, and provides it again to [users],” she mentioned.

Tashakorinia has a background in cybersecurity, which is bound to show important for constructing a product that asks individuals to share a lot delicate private and monetary info. She is constructing LumenUs alongside co-founders Sajad Mirzaei, a former engineer at Google and Box, and Larry Keeley, an innovation scientist, professor, and innovator. The staff can also be consulting with clinicians and social employees whereas testing the product.

LumenUs, a participant on this 12 months’s upcoming Startup Battlefield 200, TechCrunch’s annual showcase of promising early-stage startups, will launch in early entry in October.