Hyderabad, Jan 22, 2017: The Great Indian Career Challenge (GICC), India's first Career Quiz for high school children conducted by Lodestar - a successful Career Guidance Company held its grand finale of its first edition in Hyderabad at Sri Satya Sai Nigamagamam. About 700 students, teachers and parents from all over Hyderabad participated in the grand finale of GICC on Jan 22nd, 2017.
The most challenging career quiz that witnessed a great participation from top educational institutions to small schools was triumphed by Siddharth Jogarrat and Anirban Aly Mandal from Meridian School for Boys and Girls - Banjara Hills. The runners up were Ritwik Saharan and Gurleen Kaur Chauhan from Gitanjali Senior School – Begumpet. All the winners grabbed the total cash prize of Rs 60,000.
The prelim rounds for GICC kicked-off in the month of November and December and were organized at their respective schools. It had an interesting participation of 90 high-schools and 15,000 high-school students. After the prelims, top 8 students (4 teams of 2 each) from each school were selected to compete in the semifinals and then top 6 teams from semis were chosen for the grand finale.
The quiz aims to break down traditional barriers and mind sets one comes across while choosing a career. Regrettably, even parents advise children to pick traditional careers like engineering or medicine because they appear to provide the job security.
However, most people are unaware of the huge universe of opportunity where there are over 250 career options available, which can match a child’s true calling and aptitude. This first of its kind initiative aims to use the platform of a quiz competition to make students aware of the plethora of options available, which in turn can enable them to start planning towards a rewarding career.
Murlidhar S, Founder and CEO of Lodestar said, “Through this quiz, we aim to reach out to the common people and make them aware about the existing career opportunities a child can choose. We are tremendously happy about the success in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai and we plan to reach out to other cities, shortly.”
Apart from Hyderabad, GICC was simultaneously conducted in Chennai as well, where 15,000 students from 80 schools participated. In August 2016, in Bangalore in its second edition, GICC saw the participation of 18,000 students of class 9th and 10th from around 150 schools in Bangalore and Mysore. 600 students qualified to the grand finale where they competed for prizes of over Rṣ. 1 Lakh.
About Lodestar
Headquartered in Bangalore, Lodestar India’s first career guidance company was founded in 2015 by Murlidhar S and Subodh Jindal and has Mr Anand Sudarshan cx, former MD and CEO of Manipal Global Education Services as its Chairman. Mr. Madan Padaki co-founder and former CEO of Meritrac, is amongst the advisors to Lodestar.
Lodestar uses a scientific approach to enable parents to make smart decisions for their children in class 10. It uses reliable and authentic data-driven approach to career guidance and career building.
The program helps high school parents and students to make smart career decisions through use of accurate data, exploration of careers, psychometric tests and guidance by an expert. Lodestar exposes and educates both parent and child about the wide number of career options available today (250+), engaging with parents and child through trained guidance specialist to navigate them through career decision process. Each person is given individual attention through sessions with additional material to read online.
Lodestar’s vision is to be India’s largest and most comprehensive Career Guidance Services by helping millions of students and their parents in choosing their true career and hence helping society at large, in creating more successful and happier professionals across all walks of life. They aim to do this through single minded focus on customers and their needs and providing them with intelligent, smart, easy to use solutions leveraging technology.