Abulé. Your village for remarkable everyday care

Care is a basic human necessity. From cradle to grave, everyone yearns to be greatly cared for. Yet, in our world of technological advancements, most notably social media and AI, we seem to be drifting farther away from the essence and value of human connection. A recent survey reported that 1 in 4 adults feel isolated, lonely or overwhelmed due to a lack of support, thus craving a deeper sense of belonging. In our quest to achieve optimal efficiency, have we lost the importance of effectiveness?

Quality care is not easily accessible and is often fragmented. During the global Pandemic, the severity of our broken care infrastructure was brought to the spotlight in the United States. Not surprisingly, women, mothers, children, and the elderly, especially those within marginalized and displaced communities, were most vulnerable. Over 2 million mothers were forced to leave the workforce due to a lack of childcare, and employers scrambled to support their employees to reduce turnover rates and sustain revenue.

Care is not just an individualistic problem; it is a collective crisis that we propose to solve in a fairly nascent and overly ripe $648B market opportunity.

Abulé [ah-boo-lay] is a comprehensive, culturally diverse multigenerational care village that makes it easier to find, manage and/or provide a range of family care tasks.

Established in 2019 as a Public Benefit Corporation, Abulé means ’Village’ in Yoruba language of Nigerian origin and is deeply rooted in the concept and value of communal care. Abulé provides 3 key benefits to its members–on a single platform:

Find Care: connect with like-minded people to organically build trust and get support tailored to your family’s unique care needs in-person or online with VEIL, our profile-pairing technology that considers peoples Values, Experiences, Interests and Lifesytles.

Save Time: simplify your care logistics with our built-in collaboration and scheduling workflows, unified calendars, and automated reminders to facilitate and provision care tasks.

Make Money: offset some care costs or earn a living by sharing your time and talents with others while making meaningful impact to families, communities and society.

Abulé supports over 20 different languages and accommodates various care needs including childcare, elder care, personal care, household care, carpooling, translation, tutoring, homework help, activities, classes and more.

Abulé serves families and caregivers, especially those in marginalized communities, who are often undervalued and left out of wealth building opportunities.

Let’s be real, the majority of external family caregivers (nannies, housekeepers, elderly care workers) tend to come from marginalized communities; as such, we are building our care economy in such a way that it facilitates and promotes a fair wealth distribution. We are making intentional space in our village to lift up those whose societal contributions are irreplaceable and so often forgotten. 

Abulé provides the options for you to define what work-family-life harmony looks like to you and your family, while ensuring caregivers receive fair compensation that appreciates in value over time. We’re also focused on job creation to bolster economic development. We believe that caring for others is what makes us uniquely and beautifully human and is one of the most noble undertakings. Caregiving should be compensated much more than it is. By allowing people to tap into their talents and time, they can earn rewards that appreciate in value over time.

As a single mom with scoliosis, I can personally attest to additional challenges faced with having medical issues while being a sole breadwinner who has to care for my child and aged mother. Abulé is a platform that I need and one I wish I had access to earlier.

I left the comfort of my family and community behind in Nigeria, so I did not have the networks to tap into for help. Luckily I speak English, but for many there is also a barrier with language and how to access government services. This is why we’ve considered cultural diversity, thus support over 20 different languages.

Built by a female technical founder with over 16 years of experience in the tech industry, Toyosi Babalola has worked for world-renowned companies–Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton and Citi, delivering quality work products to clients including the IRS and NASA. She has been featured in Forbes, FemTech Insider and MadameNoire as well as several motherhood and parenting podcasts. Toyosi recently received a Women In Innovation award: Movers & Makers category, sponsored by Ernst & Young. She leads and mentors promising talent from her home country, Nigeria, where Abulé’s tech team sits. Most importantly, Toyosi is a proud mom to her incredible 11 year-old daughter.

Our leadership team and strategic partners comprise of mothers with proven track records of delivering value and excellence in their respective fields, with a first-hand experience of the broad views of motherhood.

Abulé plans to launch in 3 phases. The first two products, VEIL, our profile-pairing technology, and our suite of collaboration and scheduling tools are currently in production beta with select non-profits, allowing us to create
communities and facilitate connections prior to launching our care trading product in Q3 2024. We’ve acquired 1 paying community and 5 total active communities with $0 CAC. We are actively pursuing partnerships with non-profit organizations including World Relief, International Rescue Committee and Hello Neighbor Network (a coalition of ~80 non-profit organizations across the U.S.)

We recognize the value of this new technology may be new to most. Nevertheless, we remain curious, open, and excited to leverage this innovative technology with the ancient wisdom of tapping into the talents of our community to build a thriving digital care village.

Financial barrier: 

As a solo founder, I don’t have access to many networks and communities within the startup space. Many companies that get funded have received initial investments from their friends and family. Unfortunately my family is not able to help financially (although they have supported me in many other ways!), and my friends are in the same boat as I am. 

I see the MIT Solve community as a tribe I would like to belong to. I am looking to be a part of a community that can help connect me to investors, business advisors, innovators, and other founders. While money is important, the help and support would be invaluable. 

Cultural barrier:

Coming from a different country, I left my community behind, so I know what it feels like to be isolated and alone. When I came from Nigeria, I didn’t have access to the friend circles and community that my peers did. Moms, especially immigrants, need help from a trusted tribe, and so I am building Abulé to help those who don’t have that support. 

The luxuries technology has afforded us cannot be diminished, yet one must begin to wonder how some cultures that are seemingly poor in resources, are able to adequately sustain their livelihoods and heritage across generations. Is it mere coincidence? Or is there deeply seated wisdom prying to be unearthed?

We’ve observed and contrasted the effectiveness of communal care across several cultures, and utilized AI/ML Technology, mathematical thinking and the concept of abstraction to draw a conclusion that connection is the most important attribute needed to create a sustainable care infrastructure, not physical buildings, employer benefits or government aid–although those are
nice-to-haves.

Abulé is well poised to become a market leader in the FamTech space and we are incredibly delighted because this changes the way we experience care.

We’ve developed a Social Care Change Logic Model to thoughtfully and thoroghly address the issues related to caregiving. 

At Abulé we revere and leverage the traditional wisdom of communal care, and the ancient concept of trade-by-barter with technology including software, AI/ML, SMS, Email, Video, Language Translation and more to facilitate and provision care in our modern world.

We have 3 full time staff members, and 4 part time staff members who are contractors.

We’ve spent the last 6 years building Abulé, carefully implementing a sophistated care network to address various care needs at various stages of life, while empolying a human-centered design approach. At Abulé, our community members’ feedback shape our product roadmap and technology implementation.

Diversity is key to a vibrant village, and Abulé will be a place where everyone feels welcomed and accepted, as members of the community and as members of the Abulé team. With funding we hope to hire a diverse team that embodies our company values of awareness, appreciation, acceptance, perseverance, and preservation.

I am still connected to my roots in Nigeria, and one of my missions and commitments is to lift up my community there. I have a Nigerian software engineering team that I mentor and work with to sharpen their skills so that they may be more competitive in a global economy.

Finally, the United Nations SDG goals #8, 10, 16, call for inclusive, equitable, fair employment work for all. Abulé’s platform is a place where all people can find meaningful and rewarding work where they can use their talents and strengths to earn a sustainable income and share their wisdom across cultures. 

At its core, Abulé is a peer-to-peer marketplace supporting mutually beneficial care-exchanges. Abulé enables working mothers to find trusted childcare, while enabling stay at home moms to recoup earnings in the workforce they have forgone to provide care for their children. It has been estimated by salary.com that the economic value of a stay at home mother is ~$184,000 per year. As a leading B2B SaaS company providing care infrastructure to power communities, Abulé equips organizations including non-profits and its members with essential tools, resources and job opportunities to help the needy and displaced achieve self-sustenance beyond their crisis or resettlement period.

Members have the flexibility to pay for care with time or money using our proprietary CARE$ dollars, which ease the facilitation and provision of valuable care services and rids members of the uneasiness often associated with asking family, friends or neighbors for help. CARE$ dollars may be purchased, earned or gifted. Earned CARE$ dollars may be cashed out as income earnings and Abulé takes a transaction fee as revenue. 1 CARE$ dollar is currently equivalent to $5 USD.