Ayan Qureshi is not your typical six-year-old – as you’ll quickly discover if you ask him to list his favourite hobbies.
“I like to study for exams and I enjoy working on computers,” he told i. “I like to interconnect them and transfer data from one computer to another.”
Ayan was just five when became the youngest ever certified Microsoft Computer Specialist after passing an exam at the University of Birmingham last October. He was hailed as a tech genius before he had even started primary school. Now gearing up for the new school year, Ayan and his family are reflecting on his achievements to date – and what he hopes to accomplish next.
“Ayan really enjoyed his first year in school – he’s very good at maths and science. He enjoys them most of all,” said his father, Asim Qureshi.
“He got very good marks on his report. His teacher told me he was above average in his class,” Mr Qureshi added.
Read more: British boy becomes youngest ever computer specialist
Ayan was born in Lahore and moved to London with his family in 2009. He lives in Coventry with his younger brother Rayn, three, and their mother, a GP, and IT consultant father. He speaks English, Urdu and Punjabi and enjoys playing cricket, but technology and computers remain Ayan’s real passions.
“I want to be an IT entrepreneur,” Ayan revealed. “I want to create the biggest technology hub in the UK – and in Europe.” The scale of the hub would be massive, he said, comparable to San Francisco’s Silicon Valley, home to firms such as Google, Apple and Facebook.
The tech enthusiast said he’d put a lot of thought into how he would get his business off the ground.
While Ayan admitted that he would need “a lot of help from IT professionals and a lot of money”, he insisted he was determined to make his dream a reality.
He has the full support of his family too, although his father was quick to explain that he did not put any pressure on his son.
“I am very happy and proud of Ayan,” Mr Qureshi said. “He has an ambition to do something with his life. He has a vision. We can’t force him. I’m watching his aptitude and what he’s doing. When he grows up, he can make his own decisions – whether he wants to go to Microsoft or Cisco, that’s up to him.”
