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It had its nail-biting moments and edge-of-the-seat excitement, but in the end the underdogs from TCS Mumbai scripted a dramatic comeback to clinch the top prize in a riveting Mumbai regional final of Cerebration — The Hindu Business Line Corporate Quiz held here on Republic Day.
Comprising Pravin Varma and Priyambad Pattanayak, the TCS Mumbai team lost the chance for an early lead only to come back with a bang in an unpredictable twist in the last round to beat HDFC Life.
Trailing Pressure
So how did they handle the pressure of trailing at the last spot? Laughing off the question, the team put forth an interesting analogy: “In the middle of the quiz my partner told me that our team is like the Indian cricket team. We make things difficult for us and then we comeback and win,” says Pravin Varma. “We knew the answers, but initially we got over-confident which is why we got the negative marking but eventually, luckily, it all balanced out in our favour. Over the years, we have known each other well; we are good friends first, then quizzers. So we know each other’s strengths. We are also a part of the Bombay Quiz Club,” adds Priyambad Pattanayak.
Conducted by the Giri ‘Pickbrains’ Balasubramaniam of Greycaps, who kept the participants on their toes and the audience engaged with his wit and humour, the quiz was a test of nerves and reflex as much as of knowledge and brain power.
It comprised six gruelling rounds named after various columns of Business Line — Roots&Shoots, Windows, New Manager, Briefly, Perspective, and BrandLine.
Buzzing Questions
Some of the questions that got the audience and participants racking their brains and whispering excitedly were: What is the name of Google’s first woman engineer and now the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company? Which Mumbai hotel houses Harvard Business School’s new classroom? Which country’s national airline is EL AI? The runner-up team of Vishal Subharwal and Francis Rodrigues from HDFC Life, though disappointed with their performance, did manage to go home with a takeaway. “We learnt that it is not just enough to know all the answers but we have to be fast on the buzzer as well,” said Rodrigues.
The Mumbai regional round was sixth and final leg of the contest which saw regional winners from Chennai, Hyderabad, Coimbatore, Delhi and Bangalore battle it out for the top spot in the national finals held the same day.
Road to finals
For the Mumbai round, the online quiz was taken by more than 145 teams and the top 87 teams were shortlisted to participate. Some of the teams that had qualified for the quiz from Mumbai were Mahindra and Mahindra, Capgemini, Larsen & Toubro, Axis Bank, Vodafone, NSE, Symbiosis, SAIL, IIT-Bombay, YES Bank, IIM-Indore, NMIMS, Cognizant, Standard Chartered, Draft FCB Ulka, TCS, and IOCL. However, of these only six teams qualified for the national finals after getting through a set of 20 questions that tested them on brand recall, logos, launches, current affairs and brand history.
The title sponsor for the event was Corporation Bank and associate sponsors, NCDEX and SAIL. The gift sponsors were Raymond Weil, App Tabs and Lawrence & Mayo.
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