Sanmartini—a cocktail of explosive games—is an annual event held amongst employees of the Sanmar Group. This year members of the families of employees were also invited to participate in the events for the first time. While two events—Quiz and Cricket Medley—were planned to be held on successive Saturdays, rain played havoc and Cricket Medley has been postponed to a later date. The Quiz on November 16, 2002 with Ramkumar Shankar of SEC as the quiz master, was a great hit. The Sanmar Group was divided into three sub-groups: ‘Sanmar Engineering’, ‘Chemplast & Shipping’ and ‘Speciality Chemicals’.68 teams (38 local + 30 outstation) participated in the preliminary rounds which were held at Mettur, Viralimalai and Berigai apart from Chennai.Of these, 25 of the local and 15 outstation teams were selected for the semi-final. But only 12 of the outstation teams attended the semi-final. In all, 37 teams participated in the semi-final from which 5 were chosen for the final. As always, the teams came up with some fancy names: Sanshodhan (Speciality Chemicals), Smart Alecs (SEC), Stow Aways (Sanmar Shipping), Ship off the Old Block (Sanmar Shipping) and Supersonic (Chemplast).
The teams that reached the final of Sanmartini quiz
Of the five teams in the final, there were two ‘all employee’ teams and three ‘family teams’ on stage. The family teams were from Sanmar Shipping, SEC and Chemplast. The two ‘all employee’ teams were from Speciality Chemicals and Shipping.
It was a tough competition and the final was a thrilling affair. It featured twelve rounds of intelligent quizzing which included direct questions, audio and video rounds, buzzer rounds, and “Headlines” and “Topsy-Turvy” rounds, all of which elicited enthusiastic participation from the contestants, as well as the audience. The quiz master also had some questions for the audience and the winners were given prizes.
A family affair for the first time!
The teams that won the final were: First place: A H Kesari Prasad, Sandeep Prasad (son of Kesari Prasad) and G Shriram—Smart Alecs; second place: S Ravi, Bama Ravi (wife of S Ravi) and N Krishnamoorthy—Supersonic; third place: K Shankar, Geetha Shankar (wife of K Shankar) and Ajay Shankar (son of K Shankar)—Ship off the Old Block. The other two teams were: P Viswanathan, Capt N J Nair and B Jayakumar (Stow Aways) and P B Janardhan, C Sankar and S Sunderraman (Sanshodhan).
N Sankar, Chairman of the Sanmar Group, B Natraj, Managing Director-Corporate, Chemplast Sanmar and P S Jayaraman, Managing Director, Chemplast Sanmar, gave away the prizes to the winners. The Chairman commended the HR team’s resourcefulness and initiative and encouraged them to do even better in the years to come.