Two young students from the community, Ariana Shah and Shanaya Shah, were chosen among the Top50 winners of the 10th edition of the HT Scholarship Programme covering schools across Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai. 
 

They each received a trophy, certificate and a scholarship of Rs 50,000 at a function attended by National Award-winning actor Rajkummar Rao, actor Yami Gautam, Deepak Jeswal, senior vice-president, HDFC Bank; and Sachin Kalbag, executive editor, Hindustan Times, Mumbai.

Ariana, a student in Grade 5 at the Hillspring International School is the daughter of Atit and Shimoni Shah.

Shanaya, studying in Std V at Cathedral & John Connon School, is the daughter of Aashumi and Neil Mukesh Shah.

The 50 winners were selected after an extensive two-step selection process. In the first stage 150 were shortlisted from among the 85,501 applications received from students of classes 5 to 9, from 267 schools. The Top 50 were chosen from among them.

Both Ariana and Shanaya have excelled in studies as well as in a range of other activities. 

Ariana excels in karate, and is a Black belt (Shodan). She has won many interschool, district and state tournaments and participated in the Nationals too. Recently she won a gold and a silver medal at the Silent Knight tournament in Singapore. She also is part of the school football team and is pursuing Indian classical singing and art. Ariana also completed her Grade 4 exams in Spoken English of Trinity School, London and has acted in a Broadway musical in the city, Santa meets Cinderella.

Shanaya is a student of Odissi classical dance, and the guitar. She loves to act and has taken part in school plays. She has also participated in various Dance and Drama festivals and won prizes at art competitions held by NHAF, YMCA, and JJ School of Art. Shanaya has also appeared for the Trinity Exams in Speech and Drama as well as for the Gandharv exam for classical dance and is an IPM maths merit ranker for Grade 4.