BL Cerebration quiz kicks off in Hyderabad

In a last-round flourish, a two-member team from healthcare start-up eKincare emerged victorious in the Hyderabad regional round of Cerebration, the annual business quiz organised by BusinessLine in association with Union Bank of India, on Friday.

The 17th edition of the all-India quiz got off to a good start with over 70 teams taking part in the elimination (written) round, despite heavy rains in the city. Six teams went to the final round.

eKincare — represented by Somak Ray and Francis Kurian Thomas — and IT major Infosys were tied at 40 points in the last round of questions (a buzzer round), in which teams were awarded 10 points for correct answers and negative 10 points for wrong answers. eKincare pressed the buzzer — and got the answers right — for the last but third and the last questions — and emerged the winner.

The winner will now go to Mumbai to participate in the finals scheduled for September 7. The regional-level quizzes will also be held in Chennai, Bengaluru, Kochi, New Delhi and Mumbai. The winner at the national level will take home a prize money of ₹75,000. The four other finalists in the Hyderabd round were: Adieu ED (10 points), Sai Mitra Constructions (20 points): Univariety (20 points) and Deloitte (10 points). They were tested in four rounds of six questions each, framed in text, visual, audio and video formats.

An enthusiastic audience comprising B-School students from ICBM School of Business Excellence, which hosted the contest, and corporate employees from the city, also pitched in with correct answers, winning prizes.

Here are a few of the questions the quiz master, Miraj Vora, from Quizworks, posed to the participants: Which is the parent company of the social networking app Helo, which supports 14 regional languages and has over 50 million active users? The answer: ByteDance.

In Latin, this word means a sense of envy, a ‘looking upon’ associated with the evil eye, from a word meaning, ‘to look against, to look in a hostile manner’. Which company is named as a play on this word, and has labelled all their files NV (next version)? The answer: Nvidia. The Latin word is invidia.

The practice of registering all RTC (road transport corporation) buses in Hyderabad with a particular feature has a history that goes back to the first fleet of buses introduced by the erstwhile rulers of Hyderabad. In fact, historians say that when the last Nizam of Hyderabad handed over reins to the Government of India, one of the conditions he set was that this tradition be continued. This practice has never been discontinued since the first bus was given a registration number. Which tradition is this? The answer: The letter Z in the bus numbers.

SK Bhargava, Deputy General Manager of Union Bank of India, gave away the prize to eKincare, while D Zarar, Principal of ICBM-SBE, presented the prize to the runners-up Infosys.