When I Called Dr. Wabba About Petmatch, He Asked Me for a Cat Vaccine Instead

August 13, 2026

I called Dr. Wabba, a vet in Ibadan, to tell him about Petmatch. That's not how the conversation went.

Instead, he asked me a question. Did I know where he could get a cat vaccine for a 6-month-old kitten?

I didn't have one. But I told him I'd try to find someone who did.

So I went through my own list of vet contacts, the ones I'd been reaching out to about Petmatch over the past few weeks, and started messaging them on WhatsApp, one after another, asking if anyone had the vaccine in stock. A few of them I'd already spoken to before about the platform. Now I was calling them again, for something completely different.

One clinic got back to me. They had it.

By the time Dr. Wabba tried to follow up with them directly, using the contact I'd shared, the price had quadrupled. What should have cost a fraction of that was suddenly ₦20,000.

He wasn't happy. Understandably. He ended up sourcing the vaccine from Lagos instead, for ₦8,000, less than half the price, but with the delay and hassle of ordering from another city entirely.

Here's the thing that stuck with me. Dr. Wabba is a vet. A professional. And he still had no easy way to find another vet nearby who could point him in the right direction, no community, no network, nobody to call. He lives in Ibadan, and when he needed something as simple as a vaccine, he was on his own.

A few days earlier, I'd also spoken with Engr Hadiza, a contractor. Different problem, same root cause. She has a kitten and a dog, and she'd been struggling to find another nearby pet owner, just someone for her pets to be around, a friend, not even anything more complicated than that. She didn't know where to start either.

Two different people. Two completely different situations. The same missing thing in both stories: an easy way to find other pet owners and pet professionals nearby.

That's what actually pushed me to see Petmatch differently. I built it thinking about mating, connecting a dog or cat owner with another nearby owner looking for the same thing. But what Dr. Wabba and Engr Hadiza's stories showed me is that the real problem is bigger than that. It's discovery. It's not knowing who else is out there, nearby, who could actually help.

When that discovery doesn't exist, people get stuck. Prices get inflated because there's no competition, no options, nobody to compare with. Pet owners feel isolated because there's no easy way to find community. And small pet businesses, the vets, the clinics, the stores, stay invisible to the very customers who'd want to find them.

So to be clear about what Petmatch actually is: it's not a marketplace. We don't facilitate buying or selling anything.

What we do is simpler than that, and maybe more important. We help pet owners discover each other nearby, and we help pet business owners get found by the people who need them. That's it. Easier discovery, stronger local networks, fewer people stuck figuring it out alone the way Dr. Wabba was.

If you've ever been in a version of his situation, needing something for your pet and not knowing who to even ask, that's exactly the gap we're trying to close.

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