October 8, 2006

Jigyaasa- The Business Quiz @ TISS

28 September 2006

QM: Giri ‘Pickbrain’ Balasubamaniam

In Giri’s own words- ‘ As I entered TISS, I felt I was gonna conduct the Tata Crucible national finals all over again’ and that was the best way to put it!

Although the event was preceded and followed by Celebrity talks (Prahlad Kakkar and Rahul Bose respectively), the Business Quiz was undoubtedly the biggest programme at Manthan 2006.

The 25-question prelim (which is a pleasant change- hopefully Giri’ll stick to it) at Jigyaasa was a surprise when we were handed a paper with the questions.

I guess it’s the first time that Giri personally dint conduct the prelims.

The rules were set clear and the stage was to be occupied by 3 College teams and 3 corporate teams.. The teams could be mixed but a corporate and college student could not make a team.

The six finalists on stage were

1) Sify- Lombard (both chennai)

Vishwajeet

Aravindh Ramaih

2) UVCE, Bangalore

Rohit Nair

Chetan TV

3) BanBay

Mitesh Agarwal- Sun Micosystems, Bangalore

Rajiv Rai- Deutsche Bank, Mumbai

4) SIBM, Pune

Rohit Jain

Nikhil Narayanan

5) The Lion, the Witch and the Wadrobe Malfunction

Amit Pandeya- Questa Software

Dhananjay Shettigar- UTI Bank

6) KJ Somaih, Mumbai

Sandeep

Shameen

The finals had five rounds of quizzing. The rounds were as follows

1) Keep Walking- Dry round

2) Four Play- 3 clues (15,10,5 pts respectively)

3) Think Aloud- Dry Round

4) Think Beyond- Connect round

5) Speed Round

Although there was a close battle for second and third place, the first place was won with ease by the Banbay team comprising Mitesh and Rajiv… The brilliant Amit- Dhananjay team followed.

I personally feel that the standard at Pickbrain quizzes keep increasing as he reverts to more dry questions (which were absolutely fantastic at Jigyaasa). The use of technology (uncovering photos by parts and so on) usually spoils quizzes and brings down standards.

This is just a personal feeling as I’m sure there’ll be a large number of quizzers disagreeing with me.

Anyway, that’s all from me as of now…. Till next time