Ritu David
Ritu David, Founder and CEO, The Data Duck
Ritu is a digital nomad currently based in Mumbai. She founded The Data Duck, a digital product development and design firm, 15 years ago in Melbourne. The Data Duck uses behavioural science, data-led design and inclusive interfaces to create tech that people actually use. Ritu’s role includes balancing structured, analytical thinking with creative processes of design and communication. She focuses on keeping tech inclusive, accessible and affordable. She is currently leading her company’s work on five impact projects:
1. building assistive interfaces for seniors to be included in the digital world.
2. building tech for Red Dot Foundation – facilitating the reporting of crowdsourced sexual violence data and making cities safer for women.
3. creating a digital space for Alumni communities to flourish and support climate change projects.
4. WHO Academy COVID-19 App as part of The Data Duck’s Corporate Social Responsibility
5. creating a digital incubator for women founders along with Venture Capital firms from around the world
This techpreneur also understands the way government and multi-lateral institutions function. Ritu has worked with top intelligence agencies in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia, employing her actuarial skills to analyse behavioral risk, and opportunity. She contributed to Prime Ministerial level strategic decision-making and was blessed with the opportunity to apply game theory to live Allied ops in Afghanistan.
At 19, Ritu worked to facilitate sustainable impact as a director of Global Aid Partnerships, an Australian NGO. She created the first community based pre-school curriculum in Kenya. She landed partnerships with the UN, local government, the Australian Education Department and Maasai village elders to empower remote Kenya. The Kenya Early Childhood Education Project reduced foundational gender disparities and the gap in cognitive development between rural and urban children. The project lived on till 2016, several years after Ritu moved on from Global Aid Partnerships.
She believes ‘it’s important to be seen as a female entrepreneur in tech, not because I am me. But, because I am you. I want to hear your story. I want the world to hear our stories’
She lives by her ethos:
1. Nothing is set in stone; everything is a considered conversation. Let’s talk.
2. Lateral thinking trumps linear thinking – everything is part of a system and a network. Let’s solve.
3. You see things and you say ‘Why?’. But I dream things that never were and I say ‘Why not?’ – George Bernard Shaw