Dataqubed was founded in 2008 on a simple but uncommon idea: that the analytical standards of scientific research should be applied to the messy, complex, high-stakes problems organisations face every day. Not as a methodology. As a way of thinking.
The name is the philosophy. A cube of data - multi-dimensional modelling and interrogation, rotating the problem until the structure reveals itself. Eighteen years later that idea still governs everything - across higher education, financial services, insurance, life sciences, asset management and government. Where decisions have real consequences for real people.
Our Founders
Ritesh Patel
Ritesh founded Dataqubed in 2008 with the belief that the most complex data problems have elegant solutions, if you're prepared to look at them from every angle.
His background is unusual. A BSc in Biomedical Sciences led to an MSc in Computer Science. He holds Microsoft’s highest Azure architecture certification alongside MCSE: Data Management & Analytics.
Over two decades he has worked at the frontier of problems that matter – scaling M-PESA to over 30 million users across seven African markets, engineering data systems for global insurance and reinsurance firms where a wrong answer costs billions, and transforming the data infrastructure of universities, national regulators and financial institutions, including population-scale healthcare datasets. Working with very large databases is not the same as working with large ones – the rules that govern standard databases stop applying, in the same way classical physics gives way to quantum physics at a different scale. Few people have the depth of experience to make that scale perform. Ritesh is one of them.
Ritesh thinks in dimensions beyond the three, when it comes to data – holding more of the problem in view than most people even know exists. But that’s exactly why he applies Occam’s Razor to the solution: unnecessary complexity is always a sign that something hasn’t been understood properly yet. He is known for getting to the heart of a problem with uncanny speed, and for explaining the most technically demanding solutions in ways that clients genuinely understand. That combination – deep technical precision, plain thinking, and the patience to bring people with him – is what Dataqubed is built on.
"The simplest solution is almost always the best but arriving at simple is rarely simple. That's the work."
Su Kulkarni
Su joined Dataqubed in 2012, bringing with her a rigour of thinking that shapes everything the firm does – how it diagnoses, how it designs, and how it delivers.
A programme director at a national regulator once called her a full-stack change delivery professional. She works from the coal face to the boardroom and every layer in between - not sequentially, but simultaneously. Her empathy is not decorative. It is commercially measurable, built into every process she redesigns and every organisation she leaves stronger than she found it.
Her background is postdoctoral research at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. Her work on immune cell signalling led to drug target identification taken forward by major pharmaceutical companies. That is what working at consequence looks like.
At a crossroads between becoming a group leader in Cambridge and doing something different, she chose to change. It turned out to be the most consistent thing about her. Her first ever first-author paper began with the words A Revised Model. She has been changing minds ever since - always with evidence, rigour and defensible data-backed positions.
She founded Change HE in 2024 - an actively growing community dedicated to building change capability across the sector - because she believes the work doesn’t stop at the engagement boundary.
"Science taught me to think at every level simultaneously – the problem and the solution, their impacts, their feedback loops, what they enable and what they restrict. Nothing should be dealt with in isolation. And people are always at the heart of it all."
Specialist Depth When You Need It
The breadth of capability Dataqubed brings to every discipline is enabled by a wider team of specialists – analysts, consultants and engineers with wide and varying expertise across different sectors and disciplines.
From navigating complex regulatory and operational environments to building modern web platforms and AI-assisted automation, the bench brings depth exactly where an engagement needs it – drawing on experience across higher education, fintech, government, publishing and beyond.
The same rigour. The same senior oversight. The right depth, exactly where it's needed.
To make data, technology and change work for the organisations and people who depend on them – with the honesty that makes a real difference and the discipline to back it up.
Evidence before conclusions
We follow the data, not our assumptions. Even when it leads somewhere uncomfortable.
Foundations before facades
We fix what's underneath before we build what's on top. Every time.
People are the work
The best technical solution fails if the people who need to use it don't understand it, trust it and own it. We build capability that outlasts the engagement.
No unnecessary complexity
Complexity should come from the problem, not the solution. We strip away everything that doesn't serve the answer.