I’m Ayaan Mandelia — 15, born and living in Dubai.

I finished the ACCA this year and hold Affiliate status, having started in November 2024 and passed every Strategic Professional paper first time — one of the youngest people to do it. I also took the Oxford Brookes BSc (Hons) in Applied Accounting; the research project is submitted and the result is pending. In March 2026 I left Jumeirah College part-way through Year 10 to do this full time.

I’ll be straight about why. It wasn’t a passion for accounting — I used to say I’d never be an accountant, which is exactly what I became. It was a means to an end: a way to be taken seriously, to prove to myself that I could, and to leave school on my own terms. The odd thing is that it worked. About halfway through, adults stopped talking over me and started arguing with me instead — and being argued with, it turns out, is the real compliment.

Since September 2025 I’ve worked across AANKA Group, my family’s business in Dubai and Sharjah — seven businesses across food, beauty and wellness, interiors and construction. I track and report the numbers, and increasingly handle the digital side: the group’s websites, brand and menu work. I don’t run operations, and I’d rather say that plainly than dress it up.

Outside that, I care more about design than software, which is probably obvious from this site — dark, ornamented, the opposite of minimal. I default to Ralph Lauren Red, spend on shoes rather than clothes, and follow couture more than trends. I spent years on stage before any of the accounting — school drama, and dance with Shiamak Davar’s programme — and it’s still the most useful training I’ve had for talking to a room.

My parents are both chartered accountants and former Big Four professionals, and they built the group I work in. That’s an advantage, and I’d rather use it and say so than pretend I did this alone. What I can’t stand is people who had every door opened for them and act like they walked through walls.