Corporate Quiz Results - Mumbai

IMRB & TCS win Mumbai thriller
Mumbai, Sep 20, 2008: Action, comedy, tragedy, suspense and edge of seat entertainment, sounds like a move premiere? Read on! A full house of 600 plus people, on a Saturday evening at Mumbai was more like a ‘Karan Johar film’ as quizmaster Pickbrain described the scene. The Bollywood angle simply grew from that rather offbeat observation to almost become a theme as Mumbai witnessed a complete blockbuster of sorts.

The top six teams that made it were:

Deutsche Bank – Chayan Hazra & Sudipta Roy
Edelweiss Capital – Abhishek Bhandari & Nikung Bubna
KPMG – Adwaith Ray Chaudhuri & Gaurav Asthana
IMRB – Ashish Pandey & Amaya Samant
Ogilvy & Mather– Gururaj Rao & Hemant Sharma
ICICI Bank – Shameer Bandeally & Prasann Potdar

The quiz began with a shock, the national champion of 2007 had crashed in the prelim, and in some ways that set the tone for all the unexpected to unfold.

As the initial rounds moved from one to another all the teams looking equally good. By the third round, ICICI Bank were ahead with Edelweiss not too far but a couple of truly stunning answers from Deutsche Bank and they were back in the quiz. In the buzzer rounds, teams played very tactical as IMRB and O&M also moved into the cluster of teams.

The climax (read final round) unfolded and it all seemed like a battle between ICICI and Edelweiss for the top spot. Very few, given Mumbai’s high standard of quizzing, would have expected these teams to take a minus 10 each on a Kasturbhai Lalbhai answer but that is just what happened, just like every smart savvy Bollywood hero makes that one silly mistake to make the movie absorbing. Suddenly, four teams were in the fray with O&M and IMRB also having a fair chance to win. So the scene in true Sholay style was: Question DO, teams CHAR. In the next question, O&M went for the kill and got it right on the first buzz leading by 15. The final question opened on screen and IMRB gave it their best shot, literally (as the answer was BEST) to tie for the top spot.

In the tie breaker that followed IMRB inched past O&M to win the Mumbai leg for the first time in five years. Perhaps, in the context one would say “Jo Jita wohi Sikandar”!!