Bibin Babu and Jayakanthan R from Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Chennai, won the 16th edition of ‘The Cerebration BusinessLine Corporate Quiz 2018’ held in Mumbai on Saturday. They took home the prize money of ₹75,000.

India’s toughest corporate business quiz saw over 700 participants — 350 teams — from across the country battle it out in six centres.

“The quiz is pretty much in line with the degree of commitment The Hindu BusinessLine has always maintained towards telling the truth, informing our readers and empowering them. It fits beautifully with everything The Hindu BusinessLine stands for. We call it The Cerebration BusinessLine Corporate Quiz because it’s basically celebrating the power of the mind,” said Raghavan Srinivasan, Editor, The Hindu BusinessLine. Speaking at the finale, which was held in Hotel Sahara Star, he said the quiz was a great way to improve one’s skills, prove one’s knowledge base and a great way “to do some painless learning if you will”.

PK Singh, General Manager, Sales and Marketing, BSNL Mumbai, and Prabhat KR Singh, CEO, Union Bank Social Foundation Trust, were the other chief guests at the finale.

Team Kochi, represented by Ramdas and Jayanthi of Mikudu, a healthcare start-up, won the first runners-up prize of ₹50,000, edging ahead of Team Delhi, represented by Rohan Khanna and Aditya Bagri of Deloitte, in a tie-breaker. The Delhi team bagged the second runners-up prize of ₹25,000.

The other three teams in the grand finale were Team Bangalore (ICRA), Team Hyderabad (Sai Mitra Constructions), and Team Mumbai (Novartis). The top six teams had won the regional round quiz contests to enter the finals.

“It feels great to have participated in this quiz and won it. This is the first time we are quizzing together as a team and it was a new process for us. Again, it felt like a lot of luck was on our side, with the competition being so fierce. It’s a happy feeling as well as a feeling of relief at the end of the day,” said TCS’ Jayakanthan, after the win. Bibin Babu attributed Team Chennai’s victory to the ‘quizzing culture’ and quality of quizzes in the Tamil Nadu capital. Quizzes are conducted almost weekly in the city, and this helped the team clinch the contest, he said.

Quiz master Runal Dahiwade’s adroit questions were refreshing, replete with quirks, and had their answers in familiar names and events.

There were some lighter moments as teams negotiated the volley of business questions. ‘Tinder’ came the answer when asked to the identify a popular company that had once offered a free baby-sitting service. There was even a question on the fictional brand ‘Apna Cola’ and Gaitonde from the popular Netflix show ‘Sacred Games’.

The audience, too, offered answers to some of the questions that the regional winners failed to get right.

After kicking off in Chennai on September 1, the quiz contest was subsequently held in Hyderabad, New Delhi, Kochi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai.

The Mumbai round was held right before the grand finale. Hosted by quiz master Miraj Vora, this leg saw Novartis emerge the winner, bagging a prize of ₹10,000.

The Cerebration Business Quiz was presented by the Union Bank of India, in association with The Hindu BusinessLine and powered by BSNL. The event was managed by WOOT Factor; Quizworks was the quizzing partner; and NewsX, the television partner.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW