Business Daily The struggle to find care that sparked a business
Mar 20, 2026
Chika Madubuko, founder and CEO of Greymate Care who turned a family care crisis into a caregiving platform. She talks about designing an app for rural Nigeria, testing the idea with her grandmother, verifying and training caregivers, building offline and AI tools, and scaling to thousands of carers and multiple countries.
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Family Crisis Launched The Business
- Chika Madubuko built GreyMate Care after using her caregiving experience in the UK to solve her grandmother's gaps in care back in Nigeria.
- She tested the service with her grandmother as a guinea pig, learned firsthand what worked, and then launched a public app and adverts.
Trust And Monitoring Are The Product
- The core trust problems were geography, unknown caregiver quality, and lack of monitoring for relatives abroad.
- GreyMate's app added GPS sign‑in, shift reports and seamless global payments to give distant families real-time assurance.
Grandmother Taught Compatibility Matters
- Early trials revealed compatibility mattered more than basic skills when matching carers to elderly users.
- Chika's grandmother complained the carer did tasks but wouldn't chat, so GreyMate started collecting personality and preference data.