Women in business – Chika Madubuko

Chika Madubuko is a business professional par excellence, Bioengineer, Microbiologist, Entrepreneur and a job creation advocate. She has business experience spanning across three continents and blue chip multinational companies. She was Inbound Quality Control Officer at Amazon UK before she moved back to Nigeria.

She quickly got the role of Business Development Manager at Nigeria’s pioneer Agritech Company, Novus Agro where she increased its market share and launched the ‘Money at Hand’ campaign which connected rural farmers directly to FMCG conglomerates in Nigeria.

She joined Guinness Nigeria Plc after this as Business Development/sales Executive and was part of the team that increased the Malta Guinness depletion rate and market share in Northern Nigeria before she launched Greymate Care.

She has won numerous awards including the She Leads Africa Accelerator 2017 Bronze Prize, a Laureate, Women in Africa Initiative, Morocco and most worthy of mention, is on the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list of trailblazers.

Chika has a BSC Applied Microbiology and Brewing from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka and MSC Biotechnology and Bioengineering from the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK.

Greymate Care is an online platform that connects the elderly and vulnerable adults to a caregiver thus taking the stress of care off busy professionals.

About 50000 people turn 65 or above every day and half of that population become dependent on their loved ones for assistance with daily living due to stroke, diabetes, or sheer senescence.

Unfortunately, their loved ones are busy with their jobs to give them the care they deserve and this leaves them lonely and sick. In a bid to solve the problem, they hire a caregiver and expose themselves to further security risks as they hire a total stranger who has not been trained.

Greymate Care solves this problem by connecting them to a highly trained and insured caregiver whose background has been checked and has been trained to world class standard. The platform not only solves the problem but has the potential to gainfully employ up to 100,000 youths thereby alleviating unemployment in Nigeria.

“Greymate Care was created so Nigerians never have to experience the same hassle we did when my granny became bedridden due to diabetes. We were all busy and couldn’t provide her with the care she deserved. Hiring a caregiver for her was so complicated.” She said.

To make life easier for her clients, instead of manually lifting a service user, they use hoists.

Their best bet is influencer marketing where they partner with key individuals/ firms and gain referrals from them. “Gaining their support is easy as our services are unique and of world standard. Our mantra remains ‘build an excellent product and watch it sell itself” Madubuko revealed.

Greymate Care addresses the problem and is an online platform that connects the vulnerable to a competent, insured, and professional caregiver. Their caregivers are background checked thus taking the stress of care off busy professionals. The icing on the cake is that you can even get a doctor or a nurse from the platform. Even in the event there’s a strike, doctors never have to worry as there is a source of income for them.

As with most businesses, there are challenges but for Chika, she pulled through. In her words, “The African market is a very unique one and a foreign business idea would fail if necessary tweaks are not carried out. One marketing or recruitment error can grind the business to a total halt. For Greymate Care, it was hard initially to convince everyone on the value chain, from the investors to the consumers.

The consumers were worried about safety due to concerns about crime rate and for the investors, it was about viability. We subscribed to premium insurance and background checks from experts and with that, we were able to convince the prospects on security.” Said Madubuko.