Gubbe is a feel-good technology company that is aiming to disrupt the elderly care industry by pairing seniors with suitable young helpers on a subscription basis.
Its mission is to solve the huge global health issue of an aging society and struggling public health care.
Founded in 2018 in Finland by Meri-Tuuli Laaksonen and myself, the company has further expanded into Sweden and now the UK.
Subscribers are often relatives of the senior citizens and purchase home visits from local younger people who help with household chores and spend quality time with their loved ones.
What’s the idea behind the company?
The idea came when I began looking for a cure to my grandmother’s loneliness and I was exploring ways to have someone provide a helping hand.
I am incredibly close with my grandmother yet I didn’t have enough time to commit to visiting and helping her around the home. I was in a position where I wanted to do more but I simply couldn’t.
I had long wondered if there were some activating and preventative services that could help support the family and the elderly, but there was nothing like it on the market.
Many of the elderly people we serve have conditions such as dementia or struggle to move independently.
Gubbe helpers can take them to the toilet, cook and feed them, change their bed sheets, and do other house chores, as well as little tasks such as going outdoors.
Our mission from the very start has been to create the best elderly care service in the world for the benefit of service users, and also to give meaningful work to young people.
More from Interviews
- Meet Slava Bogdan, CEO & Co-Founder at Full-Service Marketplace: Flowwow
- A Chat with Randy Wootton, CEO at Financial Operations Platform: Maxio
- Meet Anne Palermo, CEO at FoodTech Startup: Aqua Cultured Foods
- Meet Roc Zacharias, Core Contributor at Blockchain Network For The $DOGE Community: Dogechain
- A Chat with Amit Jaipuria, CEO and Founder at Travel Media & Representation Company: Postcard
- A Chat with Taher Khaliq, CTO At Global Beauty Brand: Trinny London
- Interview with Rohini Gupta, Director & Lead Regulatory Advisor at AI Driven Regulatory Compliance Company: FinregE
- Meet Hywel Carver, CEO at Tech Deep Coaching Company: Skiller Whale
How has the company evolved over the past few years?
Like many relatively new businesses, the pandemic posed a number of challenges to us.
It was more of a problem for us because our business is centred around home visits to the elderly, and that became hugely difficult during the public health crisis.
However, it made our mission more clear than ever before as the welfare of elderly people became such an important issue, and the pandemic massively increased demand for our service.
Since our founding in 2018, we have had ambitious growth plans and we expanded first into Sweden and now into the UK, which we are hugely excited about.
We have been thrilled by the reception we have had in the UK so far and the feedback we have received from customers is that we are really helping them to solve a huge problem.
What can we expect to see from Gubbe in the future?
It’s a very busy time for us right now as we continue our expansion into the UK and continue to harness technology to improve our service.
We’ve started with Greater London but the plan is to expand into cities across the country as soon as possible.
Another exciting thing for us is we have created software which gives relatives real-time updates and we firmly believe this has the ability to revolutionise elderly care and bring added reassurance for families.
Bringing in new technology and changing the way users interact with the service is a game-changer.
We are doing the same thing that Deliveroo did to the food industry: Revolutionising how the care is delivered, what the care looks like and responding to diverse customer needs that no one is currently addressing.
The UK elderly care market is ripe for disruption. There simply isn’t anyone in the market who offers reliable and customised homecare like this.
Subscribers trust us with providing the best possible service to their loved ones and we take this responsibility incredibly seriously.
The post A Chat with Sandra Lounamaa, Co-Founder at Elderly Support Company: Gubbe appeared first on TechRound.