According to the organisers, Classmate Spell Bee is India's largest spelling competition or school students.

Students from Class Five to Class Nine are eligible to participate.

Classmate Spell Bee will travel to more than 1,000 schools across 30 cities and will reach out to more than 3,00,000 students, the organisers said.

Students from all across India can also participate online at www.classmatespellbee.in.

The top 16 participants of the competition will also get to showcase their skills on national television on The Discovery Channel, Discovery Kids and Discovery Tamil.

Highlighting the event, Shailendra Tyagi, Chief Executive, ITC’s Education and Stationery Products Business said, "Classmate has always endeavored to recognize, nurture and celebrate the uniqueness of every child. Classmate Spell Bee season 10 builds on the scale we achieved last year with the aim of reaching out to an even larger number of 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 focus this year is to create a holistic educative experience for participants using a versatile mobile app and web based learning and practice solutions. The brand promise of Classmate is to support a child’s dreams with an equally unique & world class set of stationery products like notebooks, writing, drawing, art stationery and math instruments."

Mahesh Shetty, C.O.O., Entertainment Network (India) Limited said, “Every year Spell Bee is connecting more integrally with students, parents and teachers. Having started off as a spelling competition, it is today a landmark event that propagates the education of the English language at the highest level. Like every year, the competition will be televised to encourage students to showcase their skills on a national platform and prepare for the upcoming season.”

The National Champion of Classmate Spell Bee Season 10 will win a grand prize of Rs. 2,00,000/ apart from the opportunity to witness the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 2017 with a parent in Washington D.C., US in an all-expenses paid trip.

The four semi-finalists will win a cash prize of Rs. 50,000 each.

The initial phase of the competition will consist of an on-ground exercise where children will be given spelling tests in schools. Top scorers from the school level will battle it out in the city finale round and the best performing students will make it to the semi-finals from there.

The top 10 students from each city will then appear for an online test which will choose the best 16 spellers from across India. These students will then battle it out in the grand finale to win the title of Classmate Spell Bee Champion.

ITC made its entry to the education and stationery business with its Paperkraft brand in the office stationery segment in 2002; and later expanded into the popular student notebook segment with its Classmate brand in 2003.

Together, Classmate and Paperkraft offer a range of products in the Education & Stationery space.

Classmate’s portfolio consists of notebooks, pens (Ball, Gel, Roller and Fountain Pens), pencils (Mechanical and Wood Cased), Mathematical drawing instruments, erasers, sharpeners and art stationery (Wax Crayons, Plastic Crayons, Sketch Pens and Oil Pastels).

Entertainment Network India Limited (ENIL), one o India’s leading private FM radio broadcaster, popularly known as Radio Mirchi, operates across 36 cities in the country.

Image: Classmate Spell Bee/Twitter