Corporate Quiz Results - Google tops at Hyderabad

On a bright Saturday evening, Hyderabad braced itself for the biggest quizzing battle in the corporate world. It began with a pleasant surprise as all participating teams received Rs.1000/- worth vouchers from Ascot. Cut to the quiz and it was Google India the 2008 regional champions of Tata Crucible who were at logger heads with the 2007 regional champions Satyam (now Mahindra Satyam) in what seemed like a clash of the titans before the former came up trumps with some calculative risks on the buzzers.

The Hyderabad finalists were

• DE SHAW & CO – Uzma Hussain & Abhimanyu S
• SBI LIFE INSURANCE – Aparijita Kaushal & Mehul Trivedi
• MICROSOFT – Nitish Khadiya & Sumant Srivathsan
• IDEA CELLULAR – Manoj Kumar & Rajeev Kondapalli
• GOOGLE INDIA – Krishnamurti & Lathish Venugopal
• MAHINDRA SATYAM – Murali Duggineni & Jagruti P

The quiz final witnessed three women making it to the final for the first time in this city prompting the witty quizmaster to quip ‘I feel like wishing Happy Women’s Day’. The battle on stage was very even for the first couple of rounds till Mahindra Satyam started to surge ahead with some truly outstanding answers especially in the visual round.

This put pressure on the other teams that were forced to take a few risks in the buzzer round that followed to catch up with the leaders. SBI Life Insurance, Microsoft, Idea Cellular and DE Shaw were all pegged together while team Google took a few more chances which paid off. As the quiz moved into the penultimate round it was a head on battle between Google and Mahindra Satyam. A negative on one of the questions and Mahindra Satyam was trailing Google by just 5 points as the quiz moved into the final round.

With 45 points at stake and three questions remaining technically all teams were in with a chance and no one attempted the first question. On the second question Mahindra Satyam went for a half chance and ended up with a negative. The gap between them and Google at 15 points with just one question to go. Google played cautious on the final question though Mahindra Satyam managed a five pointer it was not enough to stop the defending champs for winning again.

Google received Rs.75,000 in cash and host of goodies from the world of Tatas while Mahindra Satyam went home with Rs.35,000 the goodies and the runner up title.