A HR professional-turned-EmCee, Aravind Jayabal is now adding another feather to his cap; that of being the only finalist from Chennai in ‘IT Travellers Go, 2011', a competition hosted by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and the Bureau of Foreign Trade, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan.
“I came to know of this competition through Facebook and applied immediately. It's for people who are interested in travel and technology and I thought it was best suited for me because I love both,” says Aravind, adding “The first round involved submitting profile pictures for public voting and I was among the 45 people shortlisted from 2,317 nominations.”
“This is the competition's first year in India,” he explains, “The concentration is more on social networking and use of technology. They try to gauge how strong your knowledge is.”
After being short-listed, the candidates had to come up with a short video on a social issue. Aravind chose to do it on eye donation. “My video was ranked as No. 4 and I was selected for the final round through public votes. I am redoing the video and publicly releasing ‘Viligal' next month. It will help create awareness about eye donation and its importance. I have decided to distribute this short movie free of cost to all leading eye hospitals in Chennai to promote this social cause,” explains the 25-year-old.
While the third round of the competition involves blogging, neither the date of the event nor the topic has been announced yet. The winner of ‘IT Travellers Go, 2011' will go on 21-day holiday across four countries — Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan and India. “So far my friends have been very supportive of my efforts and have stood by me. I'm the only candidate from the city and I'm hoping for their support in the final round too,” he adds.
Visit Aravind's page at www.wix.com/emceearavind/aravind
