Of brands, boardrooms and balance sheets

THE HINDU Nearly 50 teams participated in the quiz which was a mash-up of concepts associated with business — Photo: V. Ganesan

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Many years ago, banks used to issue porcelain tiles to customers, which had the name of the customer, bank and credit limit written on them. And that gave way to a monetary term, quite frequently used today.

When a question regarding this was asked at Cerebration, the Hindu Business Line Quiz 2013, it took TCS employees R. Jayakanthan and G. Srikanth less than 10 seconds to get it right — going broke. “The tile is broken when the credit goes beyond limit,” answered Jayakanthan. The team was even faster in recognising the international group, ‘The Elders’ from a picture of peace activists, Nelson Mandela, Ela Bhatt, Kofi Annan and others.

“I started quizzing only seven years ago,” says Jayakanthan, a 29-year-old quizzer from the city, who has won almost every quiz in Chennai. “Winning is only a recent phenomenon. I have lost many quizzes to reach here,” he adds.

Jayakanthan and Srikanth won the Chennai rounds of the quiz by a heavy margin on Sunday. They are all set to compete with five other winning teams from other cities on January 26 in Mumbai.

The quiz was a mash-up of many concepts associated with business.

From the airlines whose cost-cutting measure involved taking off one olive from every salad plate served to customers (American Airlines) to the twin towers of Deutsche Bank being aptly called credit and debit, the quiz had questions on a wide range of topics.

Nearly 50 teams comprising employees of various companies took part.

Six teams made it to the regional finals after a written prelims of 20 questions. They were Kiran Vijayakumar and M. Siddharth from Cognizant, Anish Raju and Devi Karthiyayini from Accenture, Balaji Krishnan and Arun Laxman from Caterpillar, two separate teams from Infosys consisting of Vivek Venkatesan and Senthil Kumar; and Kartik Ramdas and Muthu Kumaran. Karthik and Muthu bagged the second prize in the quiz.

Quizmaster Giri ‘Pickbrain' Balasubramanium noted that said the preparations the teams had put in was a testimony to the fact that one could continue to learn and be informed about the world, even amid a hectic work life. Chennai, he said, had a history of producing some of the best quizzing brains of the country.

So, does it mean all general quizzers get attracted to business quizzing? “Not many do, most business quizzes have quite a heavy entry fee (between Rs 2,000 and Rs. 6,000).

And, now that most companies have stopped sponsoring participants, it is not affordable for everyone. You don’t want to take part unless you are sure you will do well,” said a participant at the quiz.

Keywords: Hindu Business Line Quiz 2013