IIM Ahmedabad emerge winners at ‘Tata Crucible – The Campus Quiz 2008’ national finals
March 28, 2008

Keerthi Raghavan and Dushyant Mullur win the National Champions trophy and cash prize of Rs2 lakh on the very last question

‘Tata Crucible – The Campus Quiz 2008’ saw IIM Ahmedabad emerge victorious at the national finals of the quiz held at Ravindra Natya Mandir, Mumbai on Thursday, March 27, 2008. The winning team slugged it out in a battle with the regional champions of 11 other cities and won the contest by a whisker on the very last question. The chief guest for the evening, B Muthuraman, managing director, Tata Steel, handed over the trophy, cash prize of Rs2 lakh and host of other attractive prizes to the winners.

The first runner-up was the team from NMIMS-Mumbai and the second runner-up the team from ICAI-Bangalore at the Tata Crucible – The Campus Quiz 2008 national finals. The evening witnessed some brilliant quizzing and nail biting competition between 12 teams from premier institutes, namely Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI)-Hyderabad, IIM-Ahmedabad, Narsee Munjee Institute of Management Studiesi, IIM-Lucknow, College of Engineering-Trivandrum, SP Jain institute, ICAI-Bangalore, KIIT Bhubaneshwar, Punjab Engineering College, IMT-Ghaziabad, College of Engineering-Chennai and Symbiosis Law School.

Congratulating the winning teams, the chief guest, Muthuraman said, “It was a great evening, wonderful standard of quizzing, great sharpness of mind; I was glad to be in the audience. Congrats to IIM-Ahmedabad team and all those who participated in the quiz.”

Noted quiz master Giri “Pickbrain” Balasubramaniam kept the audience and teams at the edge of their seats with the innovative and interesting questions that tested the teams not only on their understanding of business but presence of mind, teamwork and decision making as well.

Following the tremendous response and success of the quiz over the last three years, the Tata Group extended the fourth edition of the quiz to 12 cities from 8 cities in the previous year. The four new additional cities were Lucknow, Indore, Cochin and Chandigarh. A record number of close to 2,000 student teams participated in the contest from across the nation.

On winning the quiz, Keerthi Raghavan from IIM-Ahmedabad said, “We are thrilled, excited, overjoyed and proud to go back to college with the Tata Crucible — The Campus Quiz 2008 trophy. The runners-up teams, especially, NMIMS put forth a tough fight. In fact, right from the beginning of the quiz they maintained the highest score and were being anticipated as the winners. We geared up during the last buzzer round where we cracked two consecutive questions and earned the winning score. Tata Crucible is always the most awaited quiz, on campus and students start preparing for it months in advance. After the winning the gruelling regional rounds, we knew the finals would be much more challenging. We are happy that we won the challenge. “

Recap of Tata Crucible – The Campus Quiz 2008

Novelty of a new format
The quiz lived up to its reputation and this year introduced a new format of quizzing called ‘Nano Quizzing’ giving the Indian youth a refreshing new way to stimulate their minds.

The new concept has been termed as ‘Nano’ since the word Nano means “One Billionth” and in many ways a Tata Crucible Champion is “one in a billion” considering that it is a highly coveted title in Indian business quizzing and the winner comes through amongst large number of contestants. Also, the youth today refer to Nano in the context of speed – which is an important attribute required in quizzing and is a hallmark of Tata Crucible Campus Quiz 2008.

Overwhelming participation
The quiz witnessed a record participation of around 2000 teams across 12 cities — Kolkata, Chennai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Pune, Hyderabad, Indore, Chandigarh, Lucknow and Cochin in the 4th edition of the quiz.

• The overwhelming response received for Tata Crucible Campus Quiz is a landmark in business quizzing in India.
• Continues to attract teams from outstation locations (locations where the quiz is not being held). To cite an example, the quiz received participation from the nearby cities of Madurai, Kodaikanal, Goa, Pondicherry, Manipal, Mysore, Trichy, Rajkot, Surat, Jammu, Guwahati, Bhubaneshwar, Vizag, and Roorkee.
  
• An interesting end: The national finals with best 12 teams from across campuses on stage witnessed a nail-biting tough contest. After two hours of excitement and NMIMS maintaining the lead through most of the rounds, IIM Ahmedabad stormed the finishing line cracking couple of questions in the last round of the quiz.
  

Teams strategise

• Tracking questions of other cities: In an attempt to prepare in a more focused manner, teams kept in touch with other locations to note down questions and try to deduce patterns and logic deployed by the quizmaster.
  
• Urge to know about new format: The winners of regional rounds travelled from one city to another city to observe the new format of the quiz prior to the national finals.
  
• Track of the other team scores: The participating teams constantly kept a track of opponent teams score, negative points and planned accordingly to respond during the buzzer rounds.