TCS bags Kolkata round of Brand Equity Quiz 2007
The Times of India — March 15, 2007

It was time for the corporates of Kolkata to cross swords away from the business world and plot their moves outside the boardroom. Six teams - ITC, Eveready, TCS, J Walter Thomson and Standard Chartered Bank - battled it out for the top honours in the Brand Equity Quiz (BEQ) 2007 preliminary round presented by Idea on Tuesday. True to its spirit, the fight went down to the wires, with the TCS Blue team scraping past Standard Chartered on the very last question.

If the keen contest kept the audience on the edge of their seats, the ambiance was no less exciting. The theme of this year's BEQ was James Bond. With quizmaster Derek O' Brien dressed immaculately in a tuxedo and the rounds named after 007 movies, the setting was straight out of a spy thriller. But that took nothing away from the seriousness of the contest. Participants had to do some real brainstorming to stay in the hunt. Some of the questions were tricky enough to ruffle the most seasoned of quizzards.

"What are red packets in Chinese hospitals?'' asked O' Brien. None had any answer to that. "Which European leader dodged taxes on the royalty of his autobiography for six years?'' came another one. This time, a member of the audience guessed it right - Adolf Hitler. And there were prizes worth Rs 1,32,000 for the audience. The winners walked away with gifts worth the same amount. But not before they had been put through seven gruelling rounds of questions, clues and teasers interspersed with O' Brien's trademark one-liners and humour.

Standard Chartered seemed to be cruising ahead of the rest but there was a twist in the tale - much like a Bond film. They lost seven points through a wrong answer while TCS Blue picked up bonus points to squeeze ahead by just one mark. "We were lucky. This time the competition was tougher than last year. Hopefully, we will perform even better in the finals,'' said G Sreekanth, who along with Sabyasachi Chandra, had won last year as well.

The presenting sponsor for BEQ is Idea and the grand prize sponsor is Ford Ikon. The event is powered by Indiatimes.com and the associate partners are Times Now and Radio Mirchi. The venue partner for the Kolkata round is Royal Bengal Room, hospitality partner is Peerless Inn and knowledge partner is IIAS. The local prize sponsors are Hi Design, GKB, Opium, Bodycare, Seagrams, Hotel Lindsay, Club Mahindra, SH Mumtazuddin, Patton, Chateau Indage, Spencers', UTI Bank, Diagold, Inspirations, Syntech Group of Companies and Nik Nish.