MUMBAI: News media company NDTV and real estate company Nirmal Lifestyle have returned with the second season of Marks for Sports campaign, which aims to create awareness about the importance of sports in a child?s life.

To give the campaign a boost, the parties have announced a Fittest City contest involving six cities namely Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The aim is to see which city has the maximum number of people to cross the fitness threshold.

Nirmal Lifestyle chairman & MD Dharmesh Jain said that the aim of the contest is to spread the fitness message. The contest has various parameters like physical camps, surveys on health habits, government statistics and testing the fitness level of children.

?Our aim is to change the way India thinks about fitness. We already have tie ups for homes with companies like Discovery, US Open. But we wanted to extend our association with sport to beyond complexes. Therefore we entered into a 10 year agreement with NDTV for Marks for Sports," Jain said.

The contest will see each city having its own ambassador from the world?s of sport and Bollywood. Bipasha Basu is the city ambassador for Mumbai, Virendra Sehwag for Delhi while Ranbir Kapoor continues to be the national brand ambassador for the Marks For Sports compaign.

Jain said that the company sought the expertise of IAAF to find out why India wasn?t faring better at the Olympics.

Research showed that children in foreign countries like US start taking sports seriously between the ages of 12-15 while in India, children stop taking part in sports once they reach that age.

"Therefore it was important to introduce sports in a school?s curriculum. Our aim is to make the fittest city contest an annual feature," Jain contended.

NDTV will be supporting the initiative through televised debates. Besides, Nirmal will also organise sports events and an online campaign to create awareness about the contest.