After the fiercely contested regional rounds, it was the TCS Chennai team that finally romped home with the winners’ trophy and gift cheques of Rs 1 lakh in the national final of Cerebration — The Business Line corporate quiz — held in Mumbai.

Sreekanth G and Jayakanthan R, the duo from Tata Consultancy Services, Chennai, were on a roll though they faced a tough fight from the first runners-up team comprising Rohan Khanna and Anupam Jain from Genpact, Delhi. The second prize winners received Rs 70,000 and the third prize was Rs 50,000.

The winners also walked away with luxury watches from Raymond Weil.

J. Rahul and A.G. K.Murthy from Vizag Steel managed to answer the last question correctly to clinch the third spot, edging out TCS Mumbai. Quiz master Giri ‘Pickbrain’ Balasubramaniam was at his best as he challenged the regional finalists with ‘lateral’ questions in six tough rounds.

It was an intense battle of brains and grit that tested the contestants. One question that stumped all the finalists was the unique lock code of a new Japanese refrigerator, which opened only if the person in front of it smiled! It is a part of the Sony scientists’ initiative for cheering up people, said the quizmaster.

“As a quizzing company, we strictly pick our questions from what is available in the public domain. Quizzing is mainly about recollection of what we have seen and heard. So, we pick information, interpret and package it, which is what we do in our lateral quizzing rounds to make it a mind sport,” said Balasubramaniam. Rohan Khanna of Genpact, Delhi, said, “The national finals with all the regional finalists, was always going to be a close call. In the regional round, we won with a huge margin even though there were 80-odd teams, but it’s a different ball game every time.”

On their winning strategy, Sreekanth of TCS, who was also a semi-finalist on quiz shows such as Mastermind India, said reading newspapers and having a curious eye for information contributed to their success.

Ajai Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director, Corporation Bank, and the main sponsor of the event, said, “We didn’t have a moment’s hesitation when we were approached by the Business Line team for sponsoring such a programme involving knowledge and brain power.” Kumar offered support for more such initiatives and appreciated the huge turnout of participants from all over India. Interestingly, TCS had 3 teams which qualified from Chennai, Coimbatore and Mumbai, out of the six finalists . “TCS has a huge employee strength of two-and-a-half lakh giving them an edge in terms of abundance of talent. As an organisation, TCS encourages a lot of quizzing. We have a lot of internal quizzing also as our Chief Technology Officer Anant Krishnan is an avid quizzer; he started this quizzing culture in 2004,” said Pravin Varma of TCS Mumbai.

quizzing culture

“We are trying to make quizzing a regular practice in HDFC Life. We started last year from our head office and we are trying to institutionalise it across all branches. It started as an informal exercise but now, we are trying to integrate it with our e-learning module,” said Vishal Subharwal and Francis Rodrigues of HDFC Life, who were the first runners-up at Mumbai regional round.

On the progress of the corporate quizzing culture in India, quiz master Giri Balasubramaniam, who has been running a quiz company professionally for 9 years, feels that it has indeed come a long way.

J. Rahul and A.G.K. Murthy from Vizag Steel, said they receive a lot of support from their organisation which sends them for at least three or four competitions a year.

Corporation Bank was the principal sponsor of the event, while NCDEX and SAIL were the associate sponsors, and KSG group, the regional sponsor. Raymond Weil, App Tabs and Lawrence & Mayo were the gift sponsors.

This quiz will henceforth be held every year with the finals on January 26{+t}{+h} every year. And the questions will be drawn from Business Line starting today, the quiz master said.

So, quizzers can start reading up for their next chance right away!

deepa.nair@thehindu.co.in

manisha.jha@thehindu.co.in

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