In the stillness of a quiet British suburb, Michelle Watiki, 27, stood at a crossroads. Before her lay the life she had spent years crafting, secure, comfortable, and filled with promise. She had built a successful career at Rolls-Royce, bought a house and earned accolades that many would envy. Yet, deep within her, something stirred. It was not enough.
The world she had created suddenly felt limiting. As she gazed at the horizon, an undeniable urge to break free began to rise within her. What lay ahead was not certainty but risk, a leap toward the unknown, away from the comfort of a well-established future and into the untapped potential of Africa’s tech space.
Michelle’s path had been shaped by determination from an early age. At 16, she mapped out a 10-year plan, defining her future and the life she wanted to build. By 24, she had already achieved what many only dream of: Buying a house, a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering, and a Master of Science in Advanced Chemical Engineering.
Michelle Watiki is the co-founder of Duck, a startup that provides real-time market data and analytics for consumer brands, particularly in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector.
Photo credit: Pool
“I knew I wanted to be an engineer since I was 16. My economics teacher talked about high-paying careers like finance, medicine, and engineering. I chose engineering because even at that young age, I knew I wanted nice things,” she says.
But those "nice things" came at a price. Her academic path was derailed when she missed the grades for her dream universities, eventually enrolling at Aston University – then one of the UK’s top universities for graduate employability. This detour, though humbling, taught her resilience and the value of perseverance.
In university, she took leadership roles, including serving as president of the African Caribbean Society, which she turned into a professional launchpad by bringing top firms like KPMG to campus, helping her peers secure meaningful internships. After graduation, she secured an internship at Rolls-Royce, a British engine manufacturing business, which quickly turned into a full-time role.
She even convinced HR to let her switch from aerospace to nuclear engineering, a field that better suited her chemical engineering background. During her time at Rolls-Royce, she was not just another engineer. She took on leadership roles, managed graduate and intern cohorts as part of an internal early career association, and spearheaded Diversity and Inclusion initiatives to improve employment outcomes for underrepresented STEM talent.
Top 40 Michelle Watiki is a former Chemical Process Engineer at Rolls Royce in the UK.
Photo credit: Pool
Yet, despite her rise, she felt restless. Living and working in the UK offered many comforts, free healthcare, education, and social safety nets. But these comforts also bred complacency.
“I realised that greatness rarely emerges from comfort zones. Despite being celebrated for my contributions, I began to realise how few people who looked like me made it to the top in my field and how slowly things moved,” she says.
The very visibility she had was both a privilege and a barrier. Outside of work, Michelle’s life was defined by grit and sacrifice. While pursuing her Master’s degree, she worked night shifts as a healthcare assistant to save money for her first home, an impressive achievement for a young, single Black woman in a predominantly white UK town.
But the victory was bittersweet. The cold, empty house she bought became a symbol of burnout, and it took nearly two years of travelling and resting before she could furnish it and truly settle in. Despite her success at Rolls-Royce, her entrepreneurial drive grew stronger. She wanted more than just personal success; she wanted to create lasting change, especially in Africa.
She explored sectors ranging from the United Nations to climate tech and agriculture, but the right opportunities did not materialise. Then, fate intervened. She met Alex Mativo, a Kenyan entrepreneur with a keen understanding of Africa’s data challenges.
Together, they co-founded Duck, a startup that provides real-time market data and analytics for consumer brands, especially in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector.
Michelle Watiki receives her trophy during the 2024 Top 40 under 40 Women awards dinner held on July 31, 2024 at Serena Hotel in Nairobi.
Photo credit: Pool
Duck’s platform helps brands understand exactly which products are selling, where, and why, offering actionable insights on product availability, shelf presence, competitor activity, and consumer behaviour.
Michelle and her team focus on solving a critical pain point, bridging the data gap between FMCG brands and retailers in modern trade supermarkets.
“FMCG brands deliver products to retailers but often have blind spots when it comes to how those products perform on store shelves,” she explains.
Unlike general trade, supermarkets rely on sales reps and merchandisers manually recording stock levels and sales, leaving massive gaps. Duck plugs directly into supermarket systems, providing brands with real-time visibility into stock availability, sales performance, and customer behaviour.
“Knowing what is in or out of stock may seem straightforward, but it saves brands millions in lost sales every year. Plus, we combine loyalty card data with sales insights, helping brands see not just what’s selling but who’s buying, how often, and what else ends up in the basket,” she says.
Duck is now working with leading brands and retailers across Kenya, with sights set on expanding into East Africa.
Michelle's work is to help brands consolidate their sales data across multiple retailers, empowering commercial teams to make smarter, faster decisions on pricing, promotions, and distribution.
“We have also collaborated with RETRAK (Retail Trade Association of Kenya) on initiatives to advance data-driven retail decision-making across the region,” she says. She emphasises the importance of resilience in the startup world, noting that resilience is more important than intelligence when it comes to building a successful startup.
“Intelligence helps you identify problems, but resilience helps you survive long enough to solve them,” she says, adding that you can have the best strategy in the world, but if you cannot stay the course emotionally, it won’t matter.
While she has yet to make a bad hire, she faced scepticism as a first-time founder. “Some people will wait to see if you are serious. Resilience is showing them you are. Setbacks are not dead ends, but they are defining moments, if you let them be,” she notes.
