Luminary Steps
Career discovery for students in grades 9 to 12. A student answers 35 questions about how they think, what they enjoy and how they learn, and gets a short list of careers that suit them, along with what it would take to get there.
Why I'm building it
I've spent a lot of time sitting with students who were about to choose their subjects for class 11 — the decision that quietly narrows or widens everything that comes after it.
What bothered me was how those decisions were getting made. One student picks maths because their closest friends are picking maths. Another because changing subjects would mean changing schools, and they don't want to leave. Plenty because their parents had already decided, and the conversation was over before it began.
None of these are stupid reasons. They're human ones. Wanting to stay near your friends at sixteen isn't a character flaw. But they're reasons that have nothing to do with the student — with what they're good at, what holds their attention, or what they'd still want to be doing at thirty.
What I almost never met was a student with real clarity about what came next. Not certainty — clarity. Some sense of why this path and not another. That absence is the problem I'm building for.
Starting with the students
Before any of this became a product, it was counselling and mentoring — and a lot of unstructured conversation. Not to collect data, but to understand how students actually think. What they're afraid of. Who they listen to. What they believe a career even is.
Most career guidance in India is built on assumptions about teenagers rather than conversations with them. I wanted to start from the other end, and keep starting there. Every part of Luminary Steps traces back to something a student said.
What it gives you
The first report is free. It covers a student's personality type, their interests, how they learn best, and the one career we think fits them most.
If they want more, the paid Career Blueprint gives the full plan for their top match, plus a second career of their choice. Each one comes with salary ranges in India, the entrance exams involved, and a plan that runs from class 11 into the first job.
Families who'd rather talk it through can book a session with one of our certified career counsellors, online or in person in Bhopal.
The Stream Matrix
Most students choose a Class 11 stream before they know what careers it leads to, and many pick Science because they've been told it keeps every door open. That isn't quite true. Law, Design, CA and the Civil Services are open from every stream, and plenty of other careers need just one extra subject. The Stream Matrix shows where PCM, PCB, Commerce and Humanities can each take you. It's free, with no sign-up. A Blueprint adds a personal version that lays the student's own careers against every Class 11 subject choice.
Who's building it
Luminary Steps isn't a solo project. It's being built by a deliberately mismatched group of people:
Builders
close enough to the problem to still remember it
Fellow IIT Bombay alumni
who know what the other side of the decision looks like
Psychologists
who keep the assessment methodologically honest
Engineers
from some of the country's best product teams
Counsellors
who work with teenagers every week
Educationists
who've spent entire careers inside classrooms
Career guidance goes wrong when it's designed by adults who have forgotten what sixteen felt like. This team hasn't.
Try it
If your child is in grades 9 to 12, it takes about twenty minutes, and the first report doesn't cost anything.
If you run a school or work with students, write to me. Most of what's good in Luminary Steps came out of conversations like that.