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| Quiz craze |
| From business blitz to band basics, Sunday saw some spirited brainstorming in three quiz shows about town. Corporates and kids put on their thinking caps and avid quizzers had it easy with the three venues a stone’s throw away from each other, encouraging some quirky quiz hopping instead of the usual pub crawling on a Sunday evening. Here’s a round-up: |
| Trade trivia: The bulls and bears of the city and beyond put their heads together at BizQuiz 2004, presented by IIM (Calcutta) Alumni Association, in association with The Telegraph and Businessworld at Oberoi Grand. It enlisted over 40 entries amongst which 30 companies were selected for the preliminary round. Quizmaster Gautam Ghosh shot off a quick-fire elimination round of 40 questions interspersed with audio-visual clips. |
| An enthused audience got involved too, with questions including a healthy dose of lifestyle and entertainment, not just cut and dried figures and facts. The Telegraph, JWT, TCS, Lafarge, Eveready, Sanmar Group from Chennai, HSBC and UshaComm were the lucky finalists with JWT and TCS coming a close first and second respectively. |
A write-up in The Telegraph,
June 1, 2004
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| Quizzing takes root at Sanmar |
| The Sanmar quiz duo of A H Kesari Prasad and Ramkumar Shankar won the Ad Club-Business Line Quiz 2004, held in Chennai on May 7, 2004. The top six teams made it to the final from the regional rounds held in Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. In a nail-biting finish, there was a three-way tie for the second spot, clinched eventually by the Cipher Consulting team. The I-Flex team came third. |
| The round on marketing jargon and management-speak was where the Sanmar team established a clear lead over their rivals. N Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu, gave away the prize to the winning team, which included a cash award of Rs 50,000. Suresh Kumar, a marketing professional, was the quizmaster. |
| The going has been great for the team this year, placed third in the national final of the National Management Quiz- after finishing second in the regional round, sixth in the final round of the Business Line Rotary Quiz, and third in the IIM Calcutta Alumni Association BizQuiz. The lone blemish in the record was its failure to qualify in the Brand Equity quiz. Last year, Sanmar emerged third in the national final of the National Management quiz after topping the southern regional round. There was a fifth place finish in the FACT (Free a child today) - CRY Quiz and a third place finish in the Indian Express Finance Quiz. |
| Some wins from the past |
| Teams from Sanmar have performed well in business quizzes held in Chennai over the years, in fact, right from the time they started taking part, in 1999 or thereabouts. The seeds were probably sown in the Inter Business Group Quiz competitions launched within the group around the time. Even then the high level of general awareness and quickness of uptake of the participants and audience, made up entirely of Sanmar employees, and occasionally their families, had been very impressive. |
| Besides the current star team of Ramkumar Shankar and Kesari Prasad, S M Sundaram and Yashwant Saran (both no longer in the group) and V R Venkataraman have been some of the leading Sanmar quizzers of the past. The most creditable part of the success Sanmar teams are increasingly enjoying in the circuit is the fact that they are homegrown talents, and people who were not hard core quizzers even before they joined the group. |
| FACT-CRY Quiz, 1999: The presence of The Hindu’s ace quiz master V V Ramanan amidst the contestants could not prevent Sanmar from winning commandingly. |
| Brand Equity Quiz, 1999: In the regional finals, Sanmar could finish only fourth, despite a brave rally in the late rounds. It was a creditable show, though, considering the high quality of the competition. |
| Business Line Ad Club Quiz, 2000: There was excitement aplenty at the event, eventually won by Team Parijata. In a tie-breaker to decide the third placed team, Sanmar pipped Mudra at the post by answering the second question correctly, after the first one had failed to break the tie. |
| National Management Quiz, 2000: The team did one better by clinching the second spot. |
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