Rajahmundry boy emerges champion

Hyderabad: This week, the online semi finals of Classmate Spell Bee Season 11, India's largest spelling competition, were conducted for the city of Hyderabad. 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 Karri Karthik Reddy from Trips International School, Rajahmundry emerged as the winner.

Karri Karthik Reddy will now be in contention to compete in the National Finals of the competition.

The initial round of the competition received an outstanding response. Hyderabad is one of the 30 cities in which such semi finals were conducted.

In the initial phase, an on-ground exercise was conducted across 50 schools in Hyderabad 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, Shailendra Tyagi, Chief Executive, ITC's Education and Stationery Products Business said," 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."

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."

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. Two lakhs 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.