Nikhilesh Shashikumar from Utpal Sanghvi School, Mumbai is the City Champion of Classmate Spell Bee Season 11
A national spelling extravaganza across 30 cities with over 3,00,000 participants
This week, the online semi finals of Classmate Spell Bee Season 11, India’s largest spelling competition, were conducted for the city of Mumbai. Classmate and Radio Mirchi 98.3 FM launched season 11 of Classmate Spell Bee two months back. Classmate, India’s No.1 Notebook Brand* by ITC, believes that each child is unique. Inspired by this belief, the theme for this year ‘Every child is unique and so is every word’ has been built around Classmate’s brand philosophy of celebrating uniqueness. Classmate Spell Bee Season 11 has been a huge success already and continues to create waves amongst the country’s young geniuses, while giving them the opportunity to follow their heart’s true calling. This year we saw some of the most talented spellers participate in the third level of the competition in an online test and Nikhilesh Shashikumar from Utpal Sanghvi School, Mumbai emerged as the winner. Nikhilesh Shashikumar will now be in contention to compete in the National Finals of the competition.
The initial round of the competition received an outstanding response. Mumbai is one of the 30 cities in which such semi finals were conducted. In the initial phase, an on-ground exercise was conducted across 75 schools in Mumbai where children were given spelling tests. Top 15 scorers from each school then competed in the city finals round. The top performers from the city finals then competed in the Semi Final stage of the competition.
The culmination of Classmate Spell Bee Season 11 will see a grueling competition between the top 16 scorers of India to win the title of Classmate Spell Bee Season 11’s National Champion. The top 16 participants of the competition will compete in the National Finals of the competition to be telecast on National Television on The Discovery Channel, Discovery Kids and Discovery Tamil.
Commenting on the event, Mr. Shailendra Tyagi, Chief Executive, ITC’s Education and Stationery Products Business said,”Classmate has always endeavored to recognize, nurture & celebrate the uniqueness of every child. Classmate Spell Bee Season 11 takes Classmate’s brand thought of celebrating uniqueness further as it gives students yet another opportunity to identify and showcase their distinctive talents and skills on a nationwide platform. Classmate Spell Bee season 11 builds on the scale we achieved last year with the aim of reaching out to an even larger number students across schools and cities in India, through a school contact program coupled with a novel mobile app and a dedicated website to engage students. The brand promises to support a child’s dreams with an equally unique & world class set of stationery products like notebooks, writing, drawing, art and math instruments.”
Mr. Puneet Mehra, Head TV Properties, Mirchi Activations, Entertainment Network (India) Limited said, “Spell Bee has grown beyond being just a competition for school children and today is proud of celebrating its eleventh season with its makers – the children themselves. We at Radio Mirchi find it heartening to see the rage that the property has become amongst India’s young spellers. It reinstates the belief that our students have the potential of competing on an international level and are second to none. The next few stages of the competition including the televised National Finals promise to be extremely exciting as we will see only the best students from Indian schools going head to head. Spell Bee endeavours to add value to a student’s development in its true sense.”
Season 11 saw Classmate Spell Bee actively engaged with its consumers through a dedicated website. Classmate provided the Students with learning modules, tests, interactive blogs and contests to prepare for the event. The focus this year has been to create a holistic educative experience for participants using a versatile mobile app and web based learning and practice solutions. Classmate believes in encouraging children to excel in the field of their choice by striving to continuously improve by competing with themselves and not with others and to be better than themselves.
Classmate Spell Bee serves to build the brand thought on ground, inspiring school students to identify and showcase their spelling skills by providing them with a unique platform to hone and showcase their language and spelling skills
The National Champion of Classmate Spell Bee Season 11 will win a grand prize of Rs. 2, 00,000/- apart from the opportunity to witness the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee with a parent in Washington D.C., U.S.A. in an all expenses paid trip. The 4 semi finalists will win a cash prize of Rs. 50,000 each. The grand prize for the winner of Classmate Spell Bee Season 11 and those for the semi-finalists have been specifically designed and sponsored by Classmate to help encourage and enable students to follow their hearts true calling.
This year, Times NIE is the knowledge partner, Discovery Kids is the production and television partner and Victor Tango is the event partner for the property.