“It’s nowhere like the background I have been trained in. When we started off the contest, I had the least amount of experience and it showed everytime I walked the ramp or faced the arc lights,” says Maity, who has won a year-long contract with Channel V and Ice Model Management, besides shoots with prestigious international fashion magazines, thanks to this win. “Diandra (Soares), who mentored my team, taught me everything from a scratch. I just closed my eyes and told myself I could do it,” smiles Maity.

The turning point, Maity recalls, was the bikini shoot that came during the competition. The day before she had been in the bottom quarter of the competition, and the pressure was palpable. “My family wasn’t very keen on my entering modeling, and my mother was very upset about the bikini bit. I had to coax her into letting me go ahead with it because next year I would be too old to participate in any beauty pageant of this sort. I think, in the end, she was thrilled when I won,” she smiles.