26 Indian American Winners Of The Spelling Bee: The Legacy Continues

The Spelling Bee win legacy set by Indian-American kids continues as Harini Logan of the San Antonio, Texas native, won the first-ever spell-off at the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee against Vikram Raju getting 21 of 26 words right. This marks yet another year of Indian-American dominance at the Spelling Bee Competition.

Harini Logan, the 2022 Spelling Bee Champion, in her winning speech stated- “I think honestly so surreal, it’s my fourth time at the Bee. This is such a dream, this is my fourth bee and I’m just so overwhelmed". The Spelling Bee competition is for all the elementary and middle school-goers, making students spell the most difficult and complex words. The Spelling Bee has been noted as the nation’s largest and longest-running educational program, launched back in 1925.

Spelling Bee was cancelled in the year 2020 owing to the pandemic and returned last year, digitally rather than in person. However, the finals were then held in person at ESPN Wide World Of Sports Complex, Florida.

What is most notable in this competition is that the Indian-American students have dominated the competition for over 12 years now. Indian Americans have won every Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2008. The Spelling Bee has seen a total of 26 winners, comprising a historic win of 7 out of 8 students of Indian origin in 2019. Here's a list of Winner so far.

26 Indian-American winners of spelling bee

• Harini Logan (14) won the first-ever spell-off at the 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee. She won against Vikram Raju, 12, one of the 12 finalists in the spell-off, as she aced the test on how many words she could correctly spell in 90 seconds. She spelled 21 out of 26 words right winning the trophy.
• 2019 Spelling Bee competition created history with 7 out of 8 winners being of Indian origin. These winners in the final round had to spell words from the parenthesis. The winners are Rishik Gandhasri for Auslaut, Saketh Sundar for bougainvillea, Shruthika Padhy for aiguillette, Sohum Sukhatankar for pendeloque, Abhijay Kodali for Palama, Christopher Serrao for cernuous and Rohan Raja for odylic.
• Karthik Nemmani, a 14-year-old boy of Indian origin, from Texas became the Spelling Bee champion in 2018. He spelled "haecceities" and "koinonia" to win the competition. Karthik in his winning speech on stage stated- "It was just an adrenaline rush, It made me happy; it reminded me I had a job to do."
• 12-year-old Indian American Ananya Vinay won the competition in 2017. She won after spelling 'marocain' right, after numerous rounds against Rohan Rajeev, another Indian-American student. Ananya and Rajeev were the only two standing out of the total of 291 spellers.
• Jairam Hathwar of Newyork and Nihar Saireddy Janga of Austin, Texas were the two winners of the 2016 Spelling Bee. Nihar at 11 became the youngest ever to win the title. Their winning words were Feldenkrais and Gesellschaft respectively.
• Vanya Shivashankar of Texas for the word scherenschnitte and Gokul Venkatachalam from Missouri for the word Nunataq won the Spelling Bee in 2015.
• In 2014, Two Indian-Americans Sriram J Hathwar (14) an 8th grader from New York and Ansun Sujoe (13) from Texas became the first-ever co-champions of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, in 52 years.
• Arvind Mahankali won the 2013 spelling bee against Sriram Hathwar and Pranav Sivakumar, the last ones standing. He won in the final 25 round, spelling all the words right, the final word being Knaidel.
• Snigdha Nandipati a 14-year-old from San Diego, California became the winner of the 2012 Spelling Bee for the word, Guetapens." I knew it; I'd seen it before, It's a miracle." she stated in her winning speech.
• Sukanya Roy, a 14-year-old from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania won the 2011 Spelling Bee in Oxon Hill, by spelling the word cymotrichous.
• Anamika Veeramani won the 83rd Scripps National Spelling Bee Championship in 2010. She was a 14-year-old eighth-grader from North Royalton eighth-grader when she won this national title.
• Kavya Shivashankar won the Spelling Bee in 2009. Explaining her strategies Kavya stated- "Writing the word on my palm helped me visualize it. I've made accidents in the past where I say a letter and didn't mean it and you couldn't backtrack, Being able to trace the letters and visualize the word really helped. And the second thing was trying to figure out what questions I wanted to ask next."
• Sameer Mishra won the 2008 Spelling Bee and started the 1o year-long winning streak until 2019. This marked Sameer's fourth attempt. He had previously bagged 98th, 14th and 16th places in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively. The second spot was again bagged by a 12-year-old Indian-American Sidharth Chand.
• The 2005 Spelling Bee competition was won by Anurag Kashyap from San Diego California for the word Appoggiatura. Recently Kashyap returned to competitive quizzing and has won the Mimir's Well Carnation championship in May 2022.
• Sai Gunturi from Dallas Texas won in 2003, 76th edition of the Spelling Bee. This was his 4th attempt at the competition and he got it right spelling the word, Pococurante. He stated that the secret to his success was that- "My whole family asks me words."
• Rageshree Ramachandran won the Spelling Bee in 1988. Currently, she holds Ph. D and M.D. resident in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, and she's co-authored investigative studies on the Reproducibility of Biochemical Markers of Bone Turnover in Clinical Practice.
• Balu Natarajan was the first-ever Indian to win a spelling bee in 1985, kick-starting an Indian-American’s journey of dominance in the Spelling Bee. He was a 13-year-old then, from Chicago, winning for the word milieu. Talking about the win, he recalls- "It was obviously an honor and a thrill to be the winner, but it was amazing to see how the Indian Diaspora saw it as a community victory. The sense of pride among them was something special."

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