Around 8000 students from over 1200 schools across India participated in the fifth edition of the competition.

The National Digital Elocution Competition (NDEC) is an annual creative talent hunt that is designed to promote creativity amongst school children and offer them the opportunity to showcase their elocution talent across boundaries, compete with their peers across the country and win prizes for themselves and their schools.

The competition uses highly interactive technology platforms such as VDO Contest and Video Conferencing to provide a level playing field for all participants. This year’s event was held in association with Godrej Sara Lee, the manufacturers of Goodknight Naturals Mosquito repellent Cream.

NDEC is open to students in class V to X. The participants are divided into two groups—junior (class V-VII) and senior (class VIII-X). The preliminary round of the competition is conducted using VDO Contest—a web-based application that enables participants to register for the competition as well as record & upload their elocution video directly on the NDEC website from any computer that is equipped with a webcam, microphone and Internet connectivity.

The uploaded videos are reviewed by a Censorship Committee before being published and made available for public viewing and online voting.

Online voting is an integral part of NDEC and there is a special prize for the most voted video. Participants vie with each other to gather the most number of votes. This year several videos received more than 50,000 online votes each and were viewed more than 3 lac times. By the end of the online voting period, the total number of video views and online votes had crossed 21 and 8 lacs respectively.

The published videos are then evaluated based on a set of pre-defined criteria. This year 52 participants (26 in each group) were chosen for the semi-finals that were held on video conferencing. The selected participants were invited to a Reliance World in their city and given new topics to speak on. They were connected in a multi-point video conference that enabled them to see each other as they presented their elocution. A jury panel, based in Mumbai, judged them live over video conferencing.

20 participants—10 from each group—qualified for the national finals that were held in a similar fashion as the semi-finals. It was a stiff competition between the finalists and the judges had a tough time adjudging the winners.

Below are the names of the winners.:

The 52 semi-finalists were presented with a personalised T-shirt from myshop @ Reliance World and a certificate. All other participants were given participation certificates, Broadband Centre Time worth Rs. 50, a personalised keychain from myshop @ Reliance World worth Rs. 109 and a sample of GoodKnight Naturals Mosquito repellent Cream from Godrej Sara Lee.

Reliance World thanks all the participants, their parents and school authorities.

The prizes for the winners and semi-finalists as well as the participation certificates for all participants will be dispatched shortly.