Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Tata Crucible Business Quiz , a nail-biting finish

— Photo: K.PICHUMANI

VICTORIOUS DUO: (From left) Winners G. Swaminathan and Rajen Prabhu at the Tata Crucible Business Quiz regional finals in Chennai on Sunday.

CHENNAI: It was fourth-time lucky for Rajen Prabhu at the Tata Crucible Business Quiz regional finals in Chennai on Sunday evening. The vice-president of e-business at Citibank India has made it to the regional finals on four occasions, but this is the first time he crossed that hurdle to reach the National Finals along with his partner G. Swaminathan, a first-time finalist here.

The pair squeaked through in what quizmaster Giri “Pickbrain” Subramaniam called the “closest battle ever” – going into the final question, any one of the six teams could have still made it through.

Given three clues to identify iconic Chennai firm Integral Coach Factory, better known as ICF, the teams from Cognizant and IBM both made wrong guesses to be slapped with negative marking.

Both Citibank and KPMG stayed mum, playing it safe and holding their nerve to make it to the tie-breaker with 20 points each.

“What technology did Microsoft acquire from Forethough Incorporated, which it then released, and is commonly used today,” Pickbrain asked in the tie-breaker.

For a few nail-bitingly tense seconds, Mr. Prabhu and Mr. Swaminathan held an intense debate among themselves, arguing between Powerpoint and Excel before settling on the former as the correct answer, and pipping KPMG to the finals.

“The competition in Chennai is always a notch higher,” says Mr. Subramaniam, noting that even in the early rounds, where the teams seemed clueless on several questions, the audience were ready with the answers. “There are so many keen quizzers here…you get the feeling that three or even four teams from here could have made it to the national finals if they had been in other centres,” he said.

In the first round, the Citibank team failed to guess a simple answer on the establishment of Fort St. George, and then narrowly missed another on the origin of Time magazine’s list of most influential people, attributing it to Forbes instead.

“At that point, I was just worried we would make fools of ourselves,” Mr. Prabhu admitted at the end of the quiz.

However, the team made a breakthrough in the Lateral Thoughts round, identifying Priyanka Chopra as the link between Pond’s Institute, Hero Honda, J. Hampstead and a Pepsi advertisement.

“You’re never going to forget Priyanka,” Pickbrain teased as the team racked up their first ten points.

Current affairs got to play in this round, with the Sanmar team correctly identifying beleaguered American insurance giant AIG.

The Citibank team improved its situation with a superb show in Code Busters, the new round introduced this year. Asked to identify the picture of Walt Disney’s face, and the logos of Skoda, Lacoste and Playstation, and then apply a formula (D+2, A-2, C-1, A-2) to find a generic product, the Citibank pair went for bust and won all ten points at stake with the right answer “SOAP.”

The team now makes it to the national final in Chennai, along with 15 other regional finalists.

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