Meet the 18-year-old getting ready to lead her family’s business

Most teenagers struggle to make up their mind about breakfast, but at 18 Amrita Hothi has decided to spend her life in the family business.

Barinder and Dilshad Hothi started the Knowledge Academy, a professional training course company, when Amrita was three years old. At 16 she approached her parents asking for a job.

“When she came to us with the idea we were a little taken aback,” said her mother Barinder. “I had followed a traditional route of GCSEs, college and then went off to university at Kingston. I had just imagined that would be her path as well.”

• How I Made It: Barinder Hothi, founder of the Knowledge Academy

The business grew while Amrita did. “It was an amazing opportunity watching them grow the business from the beginning stages. I was three years old when they started the business but there wasn’t a day I don’t remember them working. I was in and out of the office when I was younger.”

The Knowledge Academy had revenues of over £46 million and a pre-tax profit of almost £15 million in 2024. Since its launch in 2009 it has grown from its base in Berkshire to nine offices across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and has a global workforce of more than 1,000.

The first role Amrita took on was in operations, aged 16, where she remotely managed 50 of the course instructors with support from others who had previously held the same position.

Amrita said: “I hadn’t had any kind of management experience prior to this. There were things I learned along the way — whether that was handling any objections from people or how to manage people on a day-to-day basis.”

Amrita stands and watches as her mother Barinder works

She then spent a year in a UK sales role before opening a sales office in Dubai in April 2024, starting with 11 people, growing the team to 41 with plans to expand to 50 in the next few weeks.

Despite her age, Amrita says she has not had any problems managing older members of the team. “Luckily they are all lovely people — nothing bad to say about them — so they haven’t caused me any issues yet.”

Amrita did not go straight into the family business. After finishing her GCSEs she enrolled in an accountancy course, but by then had had enough of education. She said: “My love of school faded a little bit. At school we had to do a lot of online learning and Zoom sessions, because of Covid, and it led me to see that there were other paths.”

Paul Falvey, a corporate tax partner at BDO, said that in the UK having very young adults take over the family business is no longer that common. He said: “It’s relatively unusual, especially in the UK … 18 is very young. A more common route is for their children to attend university or some form of education, or work for a competitor or some other related field to gain general experience.”

Barinder says she has great faith in her daughter’s abilities, as well as her work ethic. “She has seen the hard work that’s gone into it. Dilshad and I have been up at 11 o’clock at night packing boxes with manuals, the brown tape continuously being ripped across boxes. She’s seen first hand how the business has grown — she doesn’t take that for granted. She works very long hours, often six days a week.”

Amrita hasn’t been handed the reins just yet but Barinder believes Amrita has a lot of potential. “She brings something unique to the table: being able to take individuals who have relocated all the way to Dubai to come to work for us and have struggled initially with the work because … it’s a massive amount of change and she’s really coached them and mentored them.”